


The Tower

by warraw



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Anal Fingering, Anal Play, Anal Sex, Angst and Feels, Barebacking, Blow Jobs, Bondage, Butt Plugs, Charles You Slut, Charles is a Sweetheart, Coming In Pants, Cunnilingus, Dirty Talk, Dom/sub Undertones, Double Anal Penetration, Double Penetration, Drama, Dream Sex, Dubious Consent, Exhibitionism, F/M, Felching, Gangbang, Group Sex, Hand Jobs, Knotting, M/M, Marathon Sex, Masturbation, Multi, Mystery, Oral Sex, Orgasm Delay/Denial, Poor Charles, Porn With Plot, Rape/Non-con Elements, Riding, Rimming, Rough Sex, Sex Magic, Sex Talk, Smut, Somnophilia, Stripping, Teasing, Threesome, Torture, some sexual torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-03-15 07:00:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 30
Words: 52,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13608066
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/warraw/pseuds/warraw
Summary: Charles wanders to a very dangerous place and is plunged into a weird magical world of the Tower and the legendary man who resides there.Featuring: sexual content, magic, aloof and grumpy Erik, lots of people and strange things eager to bang Charles, some drama and feels.





	1. Chapter 1

  
  
  
  
The Tower emits a morbid, domineering presence. It stands out in the valley.

Charles has first glimpsed its’ peak in the morning. Later, in the afternoon, he is finally close enough to take in and admire the massive structure rising up in the sky. A monument to glory and humanity’s victory in the Great Magic War.  
  
The grey-stoned column is within the circular stone hedge, which is not much taller than Charles himself. It shows no signs of crumbling, despite being mapped by dark green moss and ivy.

It is strange that a narrow ribbon of trodden ground, he has taken here, stops at the stone hedge and angles towards the forest. It doesn’t go in. The arch is empty. No gates, no spikes to stop the intruders. Charles stops too. He tries to calm himself by reciting his purpose until he regains courage.  
  
When Charles steps through the arch in the stone hedge, he feels a prickle of magic all over his skin. A cold gush of wind ruffles his hair and he thinks of the wards. He turns back to glance at the path, at the valley he crossed, and a heavy sensation settles over him. As if an invisible hand squeezes his fluttering heart.

There is no way back – Charles tells himself.

Later, he will be cursing his stubborn self, for that was the moment when he could have saved himself from unbelievable torture and despair.  
  
An inner yard looks peaceful. Old and young trees seem to have planted themselves here and there. Grass is surprisingly soft and very green inside. Flowers are swaying in the breeze. Charles thinks that it looks like a sanctuary and smiles.  
  
He strides to grand wooden doors, which could probably let a knight squad march with their spears raised and, with bated breath, knocks on the door plate.

Doors groan and open for him and as Charles is gaping at the outstanding beauty of hall, a tall man in dark red cloak is coming down the stairs from his left.

“Leave,” he orders harshly and Charles almost takes a step back.

“Excuse my untimely visit, please. My name’s Charles – “

“I see it is hungry,” hisses the Great Warlock, halting in front of Charles. “Fresh meat has arrived. A mage?”

“Yes, your – “

“Leave right now. If you don’t, you will be begging for a mercy of death,” he interrupts Charles.

Charles clasps the strands of his bag and thinks of his dream, his determination.

“I have a recommendation letter with me. You might see that my grades at the Academy were excellent,” Charles flushes up when he fails to tug the letter out of his bag after the first try.

“No one leaves the Academy right in the middle of training,” states the Warlock and Charles lowers his eyes down.

His hand, which is clasping the letter, is shaking like a leaf. How can he possibly know?

“You have been banished.”

Charles hears glee and a spark of interest in the Warlock’s voice, so he looks up and holds up the letter.

The Great Warlock is a handsome man, thinks Charles suddenly. The legends never mentioned that. He is force. He is magic itself. Charles knows very well what Academy magistrate looks like: those grey-haired men, wearing majestic beards; their powerful staffs adorned with polychromatic crystals; their eyes constantly glowing, as they have used magic for so long that it became indigenous. To Charles’s eyes, the Guardian looks human. He isn’t wearing a beard. His long, dark-blond hair is not sprinkled with white. His light blue-grey eyes are piercing and his skin is even slightly tanned. And he’s putting Charles’s letter aflame.

“Why are you,” Charles exclaims and drops it, then bites his tongue. “Your Worship, what was wrong with the letter?”

“You are not acceptable. You mustn’t be here. I repeat, last time – leave before it’s too late,” the Warlock turns around and adds. “And never call me like that again.”

Charles watches him go back upstairs and he follows, because he has nothing to lose.

Warlock disappears so fast, that Charles, weighted down by his bag and tiresome journey, barely draws level with the man when he pushes open a simple, dark door.

“I’m begging you, your Wor… sir, my intention is merely studying under you. I mean no disrespect. Yes, I was banished… but, please, believe me that all allegations are false… fabricated, for I’ve been unfortunate enough to anger a very malicious man.”

“Didn’t they tell you about this place? About the dangers?” the Warlock stands still in the doorway.

“I heard them all. But… The Tower is a temple of knowledge, for its’ library is,” Charles loses his breath. “They say it is amazing. That the very core designs of magic from all over the realm are collected here.”

“I recall it was a she. She was here this spring or… in summer, a decade ago,” says the Warlock suddenly. “She swore she was pursuing knowledge. She thought her intention was her true purpose… until I found her in the yard. She has stuffed her mouth with grass and soil. Warms and birds were feasting on her eyes. They used to be brown. Unlike yours.”

Charles presses his hand to his mouth and takes a step back. His stomach twists in a vile knot.

“I didn’t do anything, you silly child. I didn’t have to.”

He shuts the door and Charles hangs his head. He slowly returns downstairs. He will try again tomorrow, he decides. 

The expanse of Hall takes up almost entire level, yet it’s smaller than it has to be. Charles is curious. He wanders closer to the walls and studies the patters carved in stone. Until he sees a hidden alcove. There is a door, which, when he opens it, leads to a kitchen. There’s a stove, a large table with a bench and an open fireplace. Other than that, it’s empty. Charles comes inside, seduced by the casual domesticity. He puts his bag down and unrolls his worn cot. Nights of dawning summertime are cold and the Tower is at least comfortably dry inside. He decides that he can overlook the etiquette this time, because the Warlock won’t speak to him today.

A merry purr draws him to the far corner where he finds a little water fountain. A round stone basin is on the pedestal. In the center, a burbling stream is shooting up and falling down. The basin has five triangular gaps in the bottom, so all water disappears elsewhere. Charles washes his hands and face and then carefully collects some water in his cupped palms. He whispers a few words and the water in his hands gleams bright blue. It means that water spirits are strong here and he can drink it safely.

When he stretches on his cot and his light sphere goes out, he starts tossing and turning. He is not afraid because he has nothing to lose, recites Charles.

He feels warm at night. So warm, that somehow he loses all his clothes. Charles squirms when he senses something hot and slick rub against his exposed bellybutton. He tries to cover himself instinctively, but the same slick presence winds round his wrists and keeps them pressed to the swirling, heated ground.

That is what forces him to jolt and open his eyes.

His neck twists and he stares at the mass of meaty, slick tentacles around and under him. He nearly loses his mind when two tentacles quickly take firm hold of his ankles.

Charles cries out when the tentacle at his belly button slides up his chest. He strains his neck and turns it to the side. He tries to curl out of slick grip, to writhe, but the slick thing is relentless when it reaches his neck and circles it. It pulses, squeezing Charles’s throat until he has to open his mouth to breath.

As if on cue, another tentacle slides up his neck and its tip forces its way into his mouth with clear primordial intentions. Charles stupidly doesn’t bite on it, so it pushes inside. Because his jaw is wide open now he can’t stop it. He can’t thrash as his neck is leashed by the monster. He is terrified, but at the same time he feels warm stirring in his very bowels. As his arms are drawn over his head and his legs are slowly lifted up to be spread in the air, one tentacle rubs along his rising cock.  

Charles groans deep inside, as two more tentacles flicker his nipples, which have never been so erect and sensitive before. The intrusion in his mouth vibrates in place, pressing heavily on his tongue. The slick it produces tastes like brine and ashes. He refocuses his teary eyes on a weird sight: tentacles, previously toying with his nipples, retreat. Their red flesh pulses strongly until the heads become engorged and then the meaty top unfurls and discharges more slick. Charles’s face burns from humiliation when spunk lands on his chin and cheeks.

He is absurdly aroused when the tentacles circle his knees, his calves, and bend him in half so his head is now positioned in between his well-spread thighs. They bend him more, as much as possible, until he tears up some more. Charles can see his hard cock now. He can also see a single tentacle rise to trace his hole, which is now open to touch. Charles moans, with his mouth otherwise occupied, as the tentacle playing with his sensitive pucker drives into his anus. Inch by inch. Gradual, but moist with slick and determined to trump his ass.

With his mouth full, Charles is observing a carnal sight of his ass getting filled. He feels the press of hot protuberance inside him and comes just from that.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	2. Chapter 2

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
No dream has ever felt so _alive_. It inflamed his body and his soul. As Charles woke up he was in a state of residual painful pleasure. He was disturbed that his body felt strange. The dream, however…

Charles hides his heated face in his hands, as if afraid that someone might look into his very soul and witness his embarrassing vision. He thought he has trampled those desires and prejudices. What is going on with him now?

Mages obey no laws in regard of licentiousness. His kind is usually perfectly indifferent to such proclivities or is taking pleasure in delicious varying tastes. Is that what shakes him to the core? That he dreamed of torrents of delights imposed on him by demonic creature? That vile, slick-limbed monster, which invaded his mouth, his ass. It squirted mucus in him. He felt it almost in his bowels. He recalls how ejaculate started to come out of his hole the moment that creature withdrew. How he couldn’t hold it in, spread like that. Charles groans and runs his fingers through his hair.

It’s strange that he isn’t hard right now. Seems as if all his shameless fantasies and lusts belong to his disordered dream only.

After Charles washes up a bit and tidies his clothes, he returns to the hall. Wondering how to approach the Warlock again, he absently studies bas-reliefs adorning the walls. The walls show fights with Greater Demons, orcs and Ghost Knights. As Charles moves on, he sees a bas-relief that displays no battles. There is simply a long line of people on deep background. Charles can’t take his eyes off them. He very nearly knows who they are, these women and men in strange clothes and of various ages. An important idea is almost there.

Someone clears their throat and Charles whirls around.

The Warlock has approached him without Charles noticing. He looks exactly like he did before, except that this morning he is wearing only a loose, light shirt and no cape from yesterday.

“I beg your pardon,” Charles tilts up his chin. “I had to spend the night inside, because – “

“You abuse my patience,” says the man evenly, folding his arms.

His eyes are cold, penetrating.

“I didn’t mean to,” protests Charles.

“You are done soon,” says the Warlock dismissively. “From now on stay wherever it lets you.”

He joins Charles and also looks at the bas-relief. And then Charles sees him there – carved in stone. The last one in the row, a man in heavy armor and in cape is holding a long sword. Charles frowns a bit, because for a brief instant, he can’t merge these two in his head. But as he glances back and forth between them, he realizes that these men are the same person.

Despite or because of low light in the hall, the Warlock looks pensive when he observes the wall.

“Sir, may I – “

“Be silent,” the Great Warlock examines the wall with his hands, muttering. “I swear I was the last one. Why did it…?”

Charles examines his fine profile until he turns to mute and confused Charles and peers him in the eye.

“How long have you been here?”

“Where?” asks Charles, more and more confused. His throat feels dry. “I arrived yesterday with the hopes to become your – “

“Charles? You are Charles?” asks him the Warlock again, impatient.

“Yes, my name is Charles.”

“I couldn’t have remembered you. Why do I know your name?”

“I introduced myself. I don’t understand,” Charles senses that something is happening, something important has happened, but he has no idea.

“Very strange,” says the Warlock as if voicing Charles’s thoughts.

“Please, may I know your name, sir? How should I address you properly?” asks Charles politely as he sees a change in mood as his chance to learn more about the man.

“Erik,” the Warlock puts his hand on his double’s hand, holding the sword.

Then, he turns to Charles with a slight scowl.

“You are very stubborn, Charles. Are you going to stand here all day?”

Charles shakes his head, thinking hard of a clever reply.

“How are those dull-witted imbeciles doing? The ones who banished you? Why did they do it?”

“I can’t talk about it now,” mutters Charles nervously, as bitterness returns. He has to lower his eyes down. His neck feels hot.

“Guilt and shame are holding your tongue better than any request of mine.”  

Charles follows him outside and observes as the Warlock, Erik, works on the wards. He follows him when he comes back inside, feeling like a lost puppy, because Erik’s words suddenly make him feel dread. The Tower stands still and unmoving, majestic as ever.

“This is my study,” tells him Erik when Charles stops in the doorway of the same room Erik has disappeared into yesterday. “I wonder why it let you come up here. Usually, visitors stay in the Hall.”

Charles keeps his mouth shut, because he knows that Erik will not appreciate his questions. Instead of asking, he gawks around an opulent round room, which stone walls are decked with spherical lights. A tall, solid bookcase takes up all wall. A black table in the corner has neatly arranged scrolls and parchments on it. A plush carpet is red and again, strangely unworn. Like everything else.

“You are distracting me,” Erik sits at the table.

“I will leave,” Charles doesn’t want to strain his good luck, so he goes to the door. “I am not leaving the Tower, though.”

“Not a chance,” says Erik grimly and Charles itches to ask what he means, but doesn’t.

In his self-appointed quarters, he tries to meditate, cook and then he goes to sleep, too tired too early.

Charles arches his back when a heavy prick fills his hole and, driven in to the taut balls, flutters gently inside his ass. Charles’s forehead rests on his folded arms on the stone floor. He opens his knees wider to accept the cock, which palpitates inside him hotly. It withdraws, up to the globular head and then plunges in his opening again. Up to the thick fur covering the creature's groin. Charles almost misses the moment when the creature, whose cock he is servicing, clutches his neck with a growl, mounting him for real. It presses its hairy body to Charles’s bare back, squeezes his neck and starts to piston its cock so quick that Charles sees white. As his eyes roll up and his mouth drops open, he clenches around the cock, barraging his behind, and comes with a mute cry.

Later he finds himself prone on the ground. His mouth is half-open and drooling a bit, as his hole is drooling the liquid of a different kind.

With a strangled moan, he pushes himself up and turns his head.

The creature, who has fucked him is approaching him again. A man-sized hairy beast with legs of a goat, sharp horns and a huge prick.

It seizes Charles’s hands, driving him up and Charles comes along. As he is pressed to the creature’s soft chest, he winds his arms behind its neck and winds his legs round its middle. Strong prick finds its way into his ass again, pierces him in one push. Charles cries from sensual overload when his hardness rubs against warm fur. The creature grabs his buttocks and sets a fast pace. After the cock shoots deep in him, Charles whines ruefully, because he didn’t come this time.

The demon gathers his limp form in his arms and carries heavy-headed Charles somewhere, not far, until it stops and deposits Charles on a three-way junction, placing him on all fours. One bar has twin arm-holds, which clutch Charles’s arms in a tight hold. His legs are spread and fastened to the other two bars, keeping him open.

As he is being fastened and positioned properly, Charles can’t stop moaning. His head is absolutely empty of thoughts and concerns. There is only lust. There is an urge to be filled again. He is shaking from it. When he hears the thumping of multiple hooves filling the space, he rejoices. When another prick pushes in his ass he screams in joy, welcoming it with every inch of his anus, his rectum. His mind nearly shatters from pleasure of being finally granted release.

 

 

 

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

 

 

 

 

Charles feels drained all morning. He is slowly chewing on the remnants of his road ration, as he is sitting under an old apple tree in the yard. He couldn’t find Erik anywhere, which worries him slightly. Most of all, he is worried because of these dreams. There is a quality to them which he is reluctant to think about.

He thinks, that his magic is weakening too because of his constant drowsiness.

But, Charles consoles himself, even Erik was like him one day. Not a young and banished orphan, but… Erik used to be an ordinary mage before he became the Great Warlock. It means, Charles still has a chance.

_Hope will kill you._

Charles flinches and drops a piece of bread on his lap. He cautiously looks around, but there is no one. At least, no one who could speak right in his head. Can the Guardian do it?

After hearing that voice, Charles loses appetite. He packs his food and tries to resume his meditation, but it’s even more difficult than yesterday. He keeps thinking of enduring all that horde last night, of being very dizzy and thirsty when he woke up. It felt real. So real, that he was thinking of the way to question Erik about it. Without telling him shameful truth.

As he is coming inside, first heavy raindrops fall from the grey sky. The cold wind blows in through the doors. Charles shivers. He thinks of starting a fire and uses some splitwood he discovered yesterday under the stove. Fire is not enough to warm him. He would not say no to a thicker blanket. When he blows out air in between his cupped palms it comes out misty.

It shouldn’t be so cold. Unless… Charles swallows a lump of dread and makes himself get up and go back in the Hall. He must look for Erik.

He is lucky, because Erik is standing by the same bas-relief as yesterday.

Charles quickly shortens the distance between them.

“Thank heavens, you are here, sir. I couldn’t find you anywhere,” words freeze on his tongue as Erik turns around.

Erik’s image flickers into Kurt. His massive, broad-shouldered form towering over Charles, who immediately backs a few steps.

“He left. He wouldn’t help you even if he were here,” it says in Kurt’s deep, grinding voice.

Charles throws both hands up to form a seal, but nothing happens.

It watches him mockingly.

“ _On your knees_ ,” it says and Charles’s knees fold up beneath him.

He drops on the stone floor on all fours, dimly registering hurt through panic.

“Now that’s the position you’ll be spending the rest of your short mortal life in,” it circles Charles, who can’t lift his eyes from the floor because of heavy, oppressive aura.

“You have been only to upper dungeons so far. And you enjoyed it immensely. I wanted to enjoy you too, for my kind has offered your damned soul the treats we don’t offer just anyone.”

Charles would try to escape if he hadn’t been frozen by magic the likes of which he only met in ancient texts.

“I’ll introduce myself to you properly,” it comes behind him and lays large hands on Charles’s behind. “ _Beg._ ”

“Please, please don’t do this,” sobs Charles.

His tears fall, as it proceeds to tear up his breeches, exposing his bare buttocks to the view.

“Please, not this. Please, don’t hurt me. I… please, please…”

It spreads Charles’s ass cheeks apart, looking at his hole clamped in ultimate fear.

“Your body has been acquainting with pleasure. Time to familiarize it with pain. _Spread_.”

Charles instantly obeys, crying. He spreads his knees and feels one grabbing hand retreat. Then, the hot tip of big cock rests at his clenched entrance.

“You, humans, are obsessed with penetration. Blame yourself. We have only adapted to your own manners,” it says, pushing that hard cock in. “Young lad’s asshole is no different than a cunt for me. Not most widely used among your kind, but can be worked into compliance. Do you feel your hole yielding? Do you feel it getting docile when the cock handles it? It already compresses the member from the inside.”

Charles feels himself tearing. There is a burn, an incredible hurt centered round his anus and permitting his insides with the insistent, violent push of the monster’s prick. Kurt’s prick. Kurt’s cruel voice telling him degrading things. Kurt’s large hands bruising his flesh. Tears blind him and clog his breathing. He can’t stop begging, because that’s what he’s been ordered to do. Pleases merge into low whines and helpless rasps.

The cock stops when it finally connects Charles’s ass flush to Kurt’s groin. Charles cries out as his trembling forearms give up and refuse to hold him anymore. The stone is cool and rough beneath his forehead, while his guts are being torn up, violated by the retreating prick this time.

“Though entering you is challenging, your warmth and tightness pleases this body,” he hears through rush of blood in his ears, through his own monotonous pleas. “I have expectations of you, young mage. When we are truly joined in Hell you shall be serving me personally.”

Its cock sinks and pulls in rhythmic cadence… Something is dribbling from his hole. Wet squelch that makes him sick, makes him want to retch. He is not sure why he is conscious, because he can only take in tiny shallow breaths in between his cries and something in his chest feels weird.

“Nothing in your world tastes as sweet as your fear and humiliation,” it bends down to whisper into Charles’s ear. “Look at yourself: bent over for me, ass ravaged and totally fucked out, weeping in pain and lubricating cock with blood. And now, little mage… _Relish it_.”

Charles’s head snaps up and his sob is turned into a loud moan. He pushes his ass back, fucks back onto the hard shaft, because suddenly it is not moving fast enough.

“More, please, more,” he rasps, drunk on arousal.

His abused, tattered ass seems to be pulsing with wild need to be ganged up by hot, relentless prick. He was trembling from pain, but now he is convulsing from pleasure.

“Please, oh, please, come in me,” he begs the creature hoarsely. “I want you so much. Please, dear heavens, please…”

An especially hard thrust forced his knees forward, scratching and tearing skin. He screamed in confused ecstasy, as the monster shot his hot load in his ass and his own cock followed.

Charles doesn’t fight the urge to call out in protest when the softened cock slips out.

“Please, one more time! Please, more!”

It circles his body, which remains in the same position, with his ass up and exposed. It comes to a stop by his head. Through curtain of sweat, mucus and tears, Charles blinks at familiar worn lace-up boots that cost him almost all his savings two years ago.

“It would be better if you _shut up_ ,” says his own voice and it grabs a handful of his hair to hoist Charles up until his head is at the same level as the monster’s groin. Pants loosened and bulging cock hanging out.

“I’d hate to leave with one of your holes unattended,” it twists his hair more, forcing his eyes up.

Charles opens his mouth, but nothing comes out. Not a whimper even. He has never looked up in his own eyes and seen the abyss looking back, taunting him.

“While you suck me, I am going to tell you the rules, as obliged by the Pact,” it guides the cock to Charles’s lips and he opens then willingly, letting erection fill his mouth. “It doesn’t change anything for you. For having entered my realm you are destined to stay here for good. Rule number one: you will be mine as soon as your mortal body runs out of life force or as soon as your mind succumbs to unholy delights. Rule number two: if you take your own life, your soul is still mine.”

Charles gags and breathes heavily. The same wild joy of having his mouth fucked makes him overlook his pains, discomfort and tears.

A silent scream deep within his soul is full of terror.

 

 

 

 

 


	4. Chapter 4

 

 

 

 

Charles wakes up by the smoldering fireplace. He wakes up crying and curled up on the cot. His body aches in places, he couldn’t imagine. Now he knows. Heavens, he knows and he feels sick. It takes a lot of calming breaths before he can stand up and start packing his things.

It was real. Real and not, because they can’t drag him down entirely. But they can… He thinks back to his pain, sharp as razor. A Monster claiming him, possessing his body and mind.

Charles fastens up his bag with trembling hands. He is thinking hard. As he analyses what has been happening to him, he comes to the conclusion that his curse is anchored in place. He has read about such things. He thought people trapped in such predicaments lacked foresight. How dumb, how stupid of him.

If there is a chance to flee, he will take it. He can’t learn magic if he is serving in Hell. They might even turn him. Icy claws squeeze his thumping heart. He might become one of the demons’ many pawns. Wracking havoc in the east, killing and torturing the innocent.

When he steps out of the Tower he thinks of leaving the Guardian a note. But he doesn’t have any ink or quills. And Erik would hardly bother reading it.

As he approaches an arch, he pauses to take the last look at the Tower.

It’s not the end, he hopes. He isn’t giving up on his dream. But he is not going to offer demons his soul on the silver platter either. Charles sighs, tightens his grip on his belongings and takes a step… Nothing happens.

He reaches out with his hand – it meets a barrier just within the arch. The jolt of wards makes his fine hairs rise. It also makes his poor heart crumble, as he hastily tests a spell to let him through. It fails. Charles stares out of the arch, at the outside world, now inaccessible, at the valley and dark green forest, far, very far away.

He wants to weep.

He senses someone’s eyes on him, he hears an amused, dry laugh in the wind. If he turns around, no one will be here. Yet, it is right here. Watching him, waiting for him…

No matter how many times he calls for Erik, no matter how carefully he searches the available part of the Tower, the Warlock is not here. Charles fights the urge to drop into a nap as the sun goes down. He is tired, so tired.

Yet, fear motivates him to stay awake, to try breach the barrier again.

He sits on the bench for a moment to catch his breath and...  
  
Charles finds himself laid out on a stone altar. His sight is foggy, but his other senses are sharp. Charles has no legs this time. He has got his hands left, but his legs just don’t exist. When he looks down his body, the legs end just at the groin. All better to fuck him like that, he thinks dimly as a red-skinned demon, in a shape of a tall man, drags him to the edge of the altar, holding onto his waist. His long red cock is erect and ready to begin. Charles screams in induced ecstasy as the cock pushes in his ass. It’s not real, he repeats to himself weakly, while his asshole is being worked out by rapid thrusts. His feelings, his pleasures are separated from his mind. It would probably hurt in his world. But right now he screams and sobs in joy, bracing himself with his hands for the taking.

The creature finishes in him. When the demon slicks his bowels with a spurt of spunk, Charles’s cock erupts too. He whines when the demon’s cock swells up instead of shrinking. The cockhead grows twice, then thrice in size and the creature pushes deeper with a snarl, as if trying to skewer Charles alive. Its’ sharp nails draw blood from Charles’s sides. He starts crying when his sensitive walls stretch under the onslaught. Then, the demon stills and his swollen erection stops engorging and proceeds pumping him up with seed. The creature lets go of his waist. It takes Charles by elbows and hoists him up. A bulge in his asshole shifts as the demon presses Charles chest to chest. Charles yelps. The creature slaps him on the ass.

Each step jolts Charles up and down a bit and jolts the cock within him. The prick can’t slip out of his anus because of the knot. He shuts his eyes tight, whining quietly. The knot seems to be getting smaller, thank heavens.

The demon comes to a stop. Hands on his waist pull Charles up so hard that the knot pops out of him. He is turned around until he faces the stone statue of the demon, which looks exactly like the one who fucked him. The creature is sat on a throne. Its’ fallos is not upright. It is raised at a slight angle.

Charles already knows where it will go. Right up his ass.

Still, he puts his hands on the statue’s shoulders as he is lowered down, his opening unfurling to be perforated by another cock. The demon doesn’t give him any slack, even though Charles is very willing in this dream. The creature forces him down and a stone shaft impenetrates Charles in a few sharp pushes. When his ass touches stone, the demon let’s go of him.

Charles knows what to do too. He starts moving, grinding up and down, helping himself with his hands. It’s hard work and lack of instant release frustrates him. His arms feel strain and his body runs fever as he fucks himself on the protruding cock. He grinds on it until his moans ring in his ears, until large hands grab his sides and the cock in him starts thrusting up too. As expected, he is rewarded with his own release when his passage milks the cock inside of him. It swells up too. And this demon also stands up, holding him close, and carries him to another statue.

It happens again and again. In the end, his stretched hole is constantly spurting clumps of splooge, derived from so many penises ejaculating in him.  

When Charles wakes up, his first impulse is to reach and feel up his legs. It’s ridiculous, because he now knows what these dreams are, but his hole does feels unnaturally spread for a few heartbeats and he groans in relief when everything is in order. Moving his legs brings tears to his eyes.

Their voices keep whispering dirty things, keep telling him to give in, to come join the eternal carnival where he will be granted pleasure, sweet pain and no attachments.

As doddery as an old man, he gets up to look for his bag. It is empty when he looks inside. He already knows it.

No food left. He holds up the bottom and shakes it. He is sure he checked it before. The memory of what happened yesterday is not clear. Was it yesterday? The day before yesterday?  
  
A folded piece of parchment and a little wrapped up package falls out. There is nothing else.

Charles sits back on the cot and picks it up. The package contains nothing he can eat. The parchment is an old map he used to get there. How ironic.

He unfolds it and stares at the Tower, drawn in the left bottom corner. When his eyes shift to the opposite corner of the map, he sees the capital city. The Academy is farther. Another place he won’t see again.

When he goes out to loot the garden, he sees an apple. It is small, but it looks red and shiny and Charles reaches up to clasp the branch it is hanging from. He decides to savor it, so he sits on the sunny patch of the yard and cleans the apple with his sleeve. Which is something he would never have done before.

He smiles ruefully and takes a bite, chewing slowly. So juicy, sour-sweet…

He retches hard, barely managing to twist his torso to the side.

After he washes his hands and mouth, leaning over the pulsing stream, he realizes that that was his first attempt to eat in days. Since that Monster, something greater than demon, has penetrated his mind, he couldn’t stomach anything but water.  
  
The Warlock is not here. No one answers his weakening knocks.  
  
The Tower doesn’t let him go to upper levels, so Charles spends the rest of the day dreading sunset and pouring the last bits of his magic into the seal that doesn’t help him cross the wards.  
  
The sunset and drowsiness arrive simultaneously.  


 

 

 

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

 

 

 

He was positioned on a flat triangular pedestal on his belly. The collar round his neck had many rings on it. One ring was for a short chain that was fastened to the pedestal. But that was not why he was straining not to move his neck. His collar had another chain fastened to it. The chain was taught as it was attached to a hook in his ass. Every time he tried to shift, the hook dug deeper into his hole. The end of the hook was bulbous. Like a sphere. It was dull, but nevertheless painful pressure. Arousal throbbed even through strain in his legs and arms. His wrists were drawn behind his arched back and tied to his ankles, cutting off any chance to get free. He would shift his neck, hook would move and pleasure-pain would twist his insides.

Demons paid no attention to him and his pitiful pants and whimpers. And Charles was on the cutting edge until he jerked awake.

This once, he has just fallen asleep while sitting in his corner and trying to calm his mind. Heavens, it felt like a little eternity, but it couldn’t be more than a couple of minutes ago.

Charles slowly stands up. He throws a few logs in the stove and heats up some water.

Erik probably wouldn’t mind if he uses an old cup, thinks Charles. He pinches some dried herbs he found wrapped up in his bag yesterday and pours water in the cup. His hands shake and most of it spills over.

The tea smells nice. He inhales the aroma, staring in the cup. Because the cup is dark and the light from the stove is dim, his tea looks like black goo. If he squints. After a few sips, he throws up so hard, that his throat burns.

  
  
***

 

In the dreamscape, he is passed around on a feast. They keep his mouth and asshole open for hours. Seed is splashing down his knees every time one cock pulls out and another plunges in. Leftover sperm squelches intensely when they force themselves in his body. He is drowning in their thick fluids, inside and out. He enjoys it. He asks for more in the brief moment when his mouth is not stuffed with hard prick.  


 

 ***

 

  
He clenches around a hard, immensely hot cock inside his passage and his throat contracts around a cock in his mouth. Charles is impaled from both ends and it’s not the worst what happened to him, except that this time he can’t see, he can’t feel his arms or legs, as if he doesn’t have any, and he is aroused beyond belief. He wants to come so much that he’d gladly beg, he would gladly fuck himself on any kind of cock offered to him, but he can’t.

The cocks in him are wonderfully, searingly warm, the sizes just perfect to fill him sufficiently without hurting him. They feel like they belong in him. Oh, if only they would move. If only he could move… his pucker clenches and unclenches repeatedly, intensifying his arousal, his throat flutters around the prick holding his mouth open.

As Charles’s inner walls contract, a ripple of hurt and want spreads through his entire body.

Nothing happens.

Heaven, move, please, move.

Soon, his strained mouth and ass begin to ache with the lack of delayed release and the ache grows on and on. He hurts all over just from being motionless. His spine feels rigid and taut, like it’s ready to crack into pieces.

As per usual, right after waking up Charles still feels everything – a phantom intrusion in his ass and his mouth, a faraway ache of an extremely unsatisfying stimulation, a thunderous demonic laughter.

Simply raping him is never enough. He utters a bitter laugh turned into a whimper. The outwardly sensations retreat while he shakes with exhaustion, curling on his side on the cot. The frustration lingers, digging talons into his tingling senses, making him cry quietly. Charles could never imagine he’d be reduced to this pale and teary version of himself. The idea to put an end to this by taking his own life, once and for all, would be more tempting if only he didn’t realize what might happen after his physical body won’t hold his spirit anymore.

There is no future for him in here, Erik has said. He also added that Charles would know what it is like to wish for death.

Some fight in him remains, so after splashing his face with water he wanders outside the Tower, where the sun is shining and the wind is blowing and the same invisible force prevents him from crossing the stone hedge. His magic is nonexistent now, sucked out by the Tower itself, he suspects.

Charles spends some indefinite time trying to break through the barrier. He wastes his remaining strength on useless attempts. After a while, his feet lead him to a tall, by all means ancient, tree by the north wall, and he sinks down within the bed formed by its roots. The shade is cool and he feels relieved when leaves hide him from the sun. Charles stretches his legs on the grass, contemplating his worn, dusty boots of all things. He avoids looking at his hands, which are irritated by scratches he sustained heaven knows how. He looks up at the green mass of whispering leaves and blinks heavily.

A white-skinned, horned demoness comes into view when he blinks his eyes open. It’s a she because Charles sees impressive breasts – big and pert, with erect sharp nipples, but she steps away from him and a dark long cock hangs between her shapely legs.

In this dream everything is painfully white and he can’t close his eyes. He discovers that condition immediately after he tries to do so and fails. His body is lax like a rag doll and Charles can do only one thing – wait and pray that it ends before he loses his mind for good.

White cuts like shrapnel into his wide eyes and they start swelling with hot tears. As they run down Charles’s cheeks he follows their path. They keep falling and falling, collecting somewhere beneath his chin and then dropping down. There are no sounds in this dream. No tastes. Just white pressing down and extending up and above where his poor eyes can see and acute awareness of being stripped naked. As if the only thing that is real is his limp, defenseless body.

Where is he?

Where is up? What is down? The question why it keeps happening to him is futile.

The demoness returns with a white tray, which she puts down at something on the level of Charles’s chest. He could see what was on that tray if he wanted, but Charles stares straight ahead. He stares ahead when she puts pressure on his mouth and absently thinks that the demoness must be upright, so he’s upright too. She puts a wide ring into his mouth, forcing it open. She then takes his limp arm and clasps a similar ring around his wrist. She forces it up and bends it behind his back. She does the same with another arm and bends his elbow up over his head. When she stretches his legs wide apart and Charles registers rings closing over his ankles and thighs. She puts one on his cock and tightens it. She pushes something cold and smooth in his ass. It slips inside easily and Charles’s anus swallows the thing. The feel of the shape reminds Charles of an egg. It rests against the very vital spot and he can feel it pulse. His insides squeeze it tightly in response. The pulsing seems to intensify. His cock fills up and he immediately feels cruel metal clasping it tight.  
  
She plays him like a real doll, realizes Charles. When she leans in Charles, unable to recoil, watches her face closing in until he can count the lashes on her grotesquely round eyes. Her mouth falls open. Her wide jaw drops, as though no tissue holds it and Charles’s tears simply blind him.

He misses a dart of an elongated tongue, too fast for his eyes, but when it happens for the second time he feels a sharp burn on the skin beneath his eye. The creature takes six more licks of his tears and scratches his skin raw.

When she pauses to look into his eyes, she blinks.

Suddenly, his body tenses all over as senses return in a rush.

It pains and burns and Charles jolts awake because there is a squirrel nudging his hand.

The animal jumps away an instant he moves.

The demoness wails in his head, furious and incensed, and Charles leans forward to hug his knees to his chest as obligatory aftershocks rock his body. This time there was something acutely right about the choice of torture, about stillness, and he’s afraid that if not for being woken up in time, he would have stayed in that whiteness for an eternity of hurting.

When Charles opens his eyes again, he is assaulted with a powerful sight of vivid blue vines running up the Tower and encasing it whole. He gasps, blinks, and it’s gone. The Tower remains grey and hovering over him with crashing weight.

He just wanted to rest in the shade for a bit. He never intended to fall asleep outside. In fact, he never intended to sleep at all, no matter how unrealistic that desire was.

The sky is purple. The sun is about to sink down behind the forest.

Charles is too weak to spring to his feet like usual. By the time he is upright, the red disk is barely visible above the tree line.

The Tower will not let Charles come in if the sun sets, so Charles inhales as much air as possible and puts all his effort into hurrying inside.

The distance is ridiculous, but for Charles it stretches into an unholy minute full of painful staggering. He sinks to his knees when he is scarcely inside. Charles watches the sun go down, watches the dark massive hedge, which cuts him off the world and knows that he’s going to die. Tomorrow will be the last day. What gives in first? His body? His mind?

He entertains himself by drawing senseless doodles in the ashes of the kitchen’s large fireplace. Charles should have lit fire to keep him warmer throughout the night, but for once he can’t be bothered.

What will Erik do with his body when he discovers it?

Come to think of it, they say that the Great Warlock seldom leaves his Tower for a long time. Charles hopes that he will be back tomorrow. Tomorrow Charles will try looking for him again. He will confess that he’s not worthy of being his apprentice and he will beg for help.

 

 

 

 

 


	6. Chapter 6

 

 

 

 

The Tower glows blue, as magical currents pulse like vines through stone and air.

Charles is ready to sag down on the floor and weep when he reaches the doors to Erik’s study. There is a thin thread-like thought in his mind – please, be there, please, be there. Instead of knocking with his hand, he bangs his forehead against the doors.

When he hears the permission to enter, heart leaps up his throat. A vision of Erik’s heavy dark red robes and green tinted glass of a narrow window swims before his eyes. It’s grotesque. There are shadows clinging to Erik. Thick darkness is rolling over the Great Warlock in waves. Shadows look alive. As Erik lifts his eyes from the scroll, Charles sees that Erik’s eyes are pools of bleak darkness, and there’s something akin to a matching shadow halo shimmering over his head.

“You look bad, Charles,” Erik observes, smirking smugly.

He was right about Charles after all, Charles thinks numbly.

Charles also thinks that bad is a serious underestimation. He has glimpsed his thin, pallid face and bloodshot eyes in the hall mirror this morning. His clothes are dirty, creased and torn in places. He can’t stop shaking. He can barely walk after another hellish night. He literally dragged himself right here, using walls for support, stopping to catch his breath numerous times. He also believes the Tower tried to trick him into going down to the basement instead of going up. The stairs have shifted in a weird way, just before he put a foot on the bottom one.

Demonic voices are louder today. Screaming and screeching wildly. Echo in his head is filled with sadistic glee. Because, now he knows that he we’ll be joining them very soon. And now there are shadows around Erik too.

The worst is the hollowed ache he is feeling inside. A sucking abyss within his soul.

“I,” he croaks, grabbing the door for support.

“You? I don’t have all day,” Erik rises up and the darkness clinging to him is expanding in pulses. “Talk and leave.”

“Help,” Charles wets his cracked lips. “Please, help me.”

“Help you? Why?”

Erik sounds amused and voices in Charles’s head erupt in cacophony.

“But you’re the Great Warlock,” whispers Charles pleadingly. “You, you’re the protector of the kingdom. The Champion… The Guardian of the Realm…”

Erik laughs to his face. His laughter reverberates inside the walls and Charles’s splitting skull.

“Please,” Charles repeats. “They are coming after me… I hear their voices. The Tower… I can’t take it anymore. I’m begging you.”

“I didn’t hear anything that I hadn’t warned you about before,” Erik says dryly. “Your soul was a tough one to devour. My congratulations. And my condolences, Charles.”

“You remembered my name,” rambles Charles, succumbing to tears and slurring his words. “You said it yourself. You remembered me. It has to mean something. Now I see. This place can do that to you… shift your perceptions… your memories. It is always here? I am right? Am I right? It is listening right now? The Tower?”

Suddenly, his voice steadies and he says, as if talking to no one in particular.

“The seal is already thinner, fainter. When the blue moon baths in sacred blood, dark titan will be unburied again and his emissaries will follow. This world will burn and bleed dry, purified by mortal fire.”

When his mouth claps shut, darkness roars up and he knows nothing.

 

 

***  


 

 

Charles’s eyes shoot open and he gasps, but that the only thing he does. He feels as if his body is pressed into the bed he’s lying on. He can’t move a muscle, can’t shift his neck. Nothing. His mind is both foggy and empty, but at least there are no voices for now.

His eyes take in a nice chamber bathed in gentle golden light. He looks up and sees a familiar ceiling carved in grey stone. He looks down his nose and sees his body on top of covers. A glance to the left reveals a wall filled with shelves, which are stacked with books and scrolls. A look to the right brings in his focus Erik’s tall figure, staring out of the window. Charles strives to say something, but gasping is all he can do. Because of the fog in his head he’s not as terrified as he should be.

“Finally awake,” Erik turns from his staring and approaches the bed.

“You’re under the spell. Spells,” he corrects himself, coming to a stop at the footboard. “Now, there’s something I need you to tell me. I shall not waste my time, so you can’t choose not to speak or hide the truth.”

Out of the sudden, the pressure on his throat he never noticed before, disappears and Charles coughs a few times.

“As I have warned you before, you’re dying,” continues Erik, “your magical reserves are nonexistent and there is only enough life force left in you to sustain you for one, two days at most. I’m keeping your mind and body in a magical stasis, but it is temporary.”

“Thank you,” manages Charles, as his eyes fill with tears. “I don’t want to die. I have not even lived. I’m so young and I’m so afraid. I’m afraid of pain. I’m scared that you will leave my body in the forest to be torn by beasts. The High Demon will torture my soul till the end of times, right? Why am I saying this? Oh, I’m so ashamed… I’m mortified. What have you done to me?”

“Were you following me? You can’t lie and can’t keep anything from me. I hardly dreamed of listening to you sobbing out all your secrets, believe me.”

“I believe you. I think I never believed anyone as much as I believe you. I also hate you for this. I hate you for not helping me earlier…”

Erik ignores his statement, while Charles’s face grows hotter and hotter with disgrace and humiliation.

“The creature that is kept imprisoned by this tower is not fully cognizant. The High Demon, some might call it an ancient god, can recognize a fresh spirit, especially one blessed with a spark of unholy energy. A conduit. A mage like yourself. Yet, it is unable to touch you directly. Only through your human flaws and errors, by feeding on them, nurturing them until human mages lose their minds and commit to serve or deliver themselves to torture in the dimension, which is described in folklore as hell. Tell me, Charles, what is your error? Your weakness? What is it that thing you’ve been searching for when you arrived here?”

“I think I am stubborn and I am hasty. I can be indiscreet and plotting. I’m flamboyant at times. I can also be overbearing. I don’t know what I’ve been searching for,” whimpers Charles, swallowing tears.

“No. It should be something perfectly simple. Tell me what it did to you? What these voices made you do to yourself?”

“I didn’t do anything to myself!” he almost screamed. “They’ve been fucking me. They fucked me so I can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t even think!”

Erik makes a strange sound, something between surprise and dark amusement, as Charles starts spilling every single detail of his body and mind being penetrated and violated. When he runs out of details he shuts his eyes, wishing death upon himself.

“I want to die… Please, kill me, just end this,” he begs with dry, very dry lips. “It won… It won either way.”

“You claimed to have arrived here searching for knowledge, wisdom, guidance. Power – so I assumed. But, truth is, you were into pursuing the needs of the flesh. You surprised me a little with your personal choice of hell,” surmises Erik calmly. “You must have enjoyed it. Did their actions please you?”

“Yes,” he admits dully, no longer struggling. “I despised being abused, I dread being treated like that. But I loved the fucking, I loved being sated in that way. I can’t live without it now… This is agony.”

“Obviously, you wouldn’t be able to live without it now,” tells him Erik, “unless, those delights reach the unreachable pinnacle.”

“What do you mean?”

“Unless you’re forever sated, using your own words, which state, in human terms, is almost impossible to obtain,” answers Erik.

Charles can’t stand looking at him any longer. He shuts his eyes again until a question from Erik forces his mouth to open.

“Do you truly want to live or do you want me to help you by putting you out? I’ll do you a favor and make it painless, so you won’t suffer and your soul can escape their clutches.”

“Live, I want to live. Please… But if living means prolonging this, I’d rather you kill me.”

“Killing you is a courtesy. But you honestly can’t decide which you choose. Should you choose living, you’d have to stay more or less confined to the Tower. You’ll continue craving the lecheries those demons imposed upon you. Distancing away from this place or not fucking, as you phrase it, might end you without my intervention. Is it the life you wish to live?”

“Please, I’m afraid to die. I’m so fucking pathetic… I’m afraid, so afraid,” repeats Charles again and again as fear clouds his mind. He doesn’t know what he’s asking for. He doesn’t know what he’s feeling anymore.

“Conversing with you seems to be futile. Well, there is the other possibility, then,” quips Erik flatly.

Charles looks at Erik in panic.

“Do you want me to do that to you? Do you want me to fuck you? What do you think of me taking pleasure with you, Charles? Answer me.”

“Why? What are you talking about? What are you asking?... Oh, heavens, I think, I do want you,” words just spill from his mouth while he continues to cry. “I’ve been thinking that you’re very attractive since that instance we have met. I sometimes find lots of people, men and women, attractive in that way. Though I never… It comes easy to me… Thinking of laying with you thrills me, fills me with terror and also joy. Your proposition scares me. Why am I so excited? I’m so ashamed. Please, make it stop! Please!”

Erik lifts his hand and a flash of a seal being lifted is the last thing Charles sees.  


 

 

 

 


	7. Chapter 7

 

 

 

After feeding him something sweet and savory from the huge goblet, tilting it up so Charles won’t spill it on himself as he’s already done with a cup of water, Erik puts the goblet aside.

“Get up. The bath is ready,” he says and gets up himself, rolling up the sleeves of his shirt.

Since Erik has lifted the spell, he can hear demons back in his head and he can definitely see magic swirling through the Tower. As if his eyes are able to see and his ears are able to hear beyond the realm he’s in. Fortunately, voices do appear to sound fainter, just bearable, which must be Erik keeping them at bay. Erik, who is still swarmed with darkness, woven around him like a semi-transparent cloth.

“Do you want me to… Ah, of course,” mumbles Charles, flashing scarlet, and lifts his hand to grab a chair standing next to the table for support. “Oh, I can move a little better. Amazing! What was in that goblet?”

“My tears of regret,” retorts Erik, watching him getting on his feet and swaying a bit.

He steps closer and makes Charles lean on his side. They do not leave the chamber Charles woke up in. Instead, Erik leads him to the heavy dark tapestry in the corner and pushes it aside. Charles sees a tiny washroom with a metal bath fit into an arch by the window. It is steaming.

“Oh, and, Charles. You may treat this chamber as your new quarters. Books and clothes are yours as well,” says Erik, meanwhile. “This chamber is right under mine. That doesn’t mean that you’re welcomed to mine, of course. Now, strip.”

Charles shoves his badly-timed modesty away. Erik claimed he would help him and the nature of that help meant fucking throughout _geis_ , which may take a very, very long time. It may probably take up all Charles’s life. He thinks that they have to talk about details, but it sure is happening. Fucking is happening. Unless Charles wants voices from the abyss and shameful urges to drive him into an early grave.

While he’s struggling with pulling off his tattered shirt he realizes that Erik doesn’t look away.

Charles bends to take off his boots. After the boots are off, he discovers that bare stone is not as nasty as he’s imagined. It feels dry and it’s cold, but not unpleasant. Under Erik’s gaze, he pulls at his belt, but his hands seem not to cooperate as usual. Without saying anything, Erik uncages it for him, opening up his loose breeches and pulling them down to his knees. Followed by his undergarments.

When Charles is standing naked in front of Erik, feeling exposed and frantically searching for something to say, it appears he doesn’t need any words.

Erik does look him up and down. Charles stands still, while Erik places his hands on Charles’s chest as if probing for something. In such fashion, his hands slide down to his pronounced ribs and his belly, hollowed in, because of Charles’s inability to stomach food. Charles keeps his eyes on Erik’s face, while Erik takes hold of his cock and gives it a light squeeze, which Charles can’t help but respond to. Because he’s watching Erik so intently he doesn’t miss a satisfied smile.

In a blink, Erik grabs Charles’s hips and turns him around. Then, his hands close around his neck, not tight, but not loose either. Erik’s thumbs are rubbing ticklish lines along his nape. Charles’s breath hitches at that. As Erik’s exploration moves down to his shoulders and maps the curve of his back, Charles feels heat gathering in his lower belly.

Erik plants his hands on Charles’s buttocks. His fingers dig in a bit, as if he intends to mold the flesh.

“I can’t remember. Perhaps, I haven’t touched anyone in dozens of years,” comes Erik’s low voice. “If ever. But the ways of flesh seem very familiar.”

“Why?” wonders Charles, shivering, when Erik runs his fingers closer to his ass crack.

“Because I’m the Great Warlock,” says Erik, as if that should be enough. “And now I’m thinking, Charles, I’m wondering what higher powers brought you here. Or was it someone’s malicious intent? Another brainless plot to compromise me?”

Erik accentuates his words by rubbing his finger along Charles’s crack. Down to brush his hole with a light touch and then up. Up and down. Charles’s knees, already unsteady, grow dangerously weak.

“If that’s the case, they could have chosen someone more alluring and less determined to fail… not to walk right into the gates of hell unprepared,” Charles whispers feebly.

“Wrong. You’re plenty alluring. Are you not in possession of a mirror? I think there is one somewhere here,” Erik winds his arms round Charles’s waist and pulls him in. “But I will not stress the appeal you possess now, for you may fall a victim to yet another sin. And we can’t afford that, can we now?”

“I realize that you may choose not to answer,” Charles leans back into Erik’s embrace, as his skin is crawling with goose bumps. “I think that begging you is futile. I can,” Charles braces himself, “I can see you now. Darkness is seeping into you. It has encased you, but you somehow remain yourself, I believe. To an extent. I also began to see the magic lines and currents and… what I think, you’ve seen something in me that made you reconsider. What do you need me for? What did you see?”

“I saw the future,” says Erik, pushing him away. “The bath, Charles.”

Through lust and anticipation clouding his mind Charles senses something not known. Like a phantom menace. He is lost, weak, probably his mind is gravely messed up for good… He thinks that his desires will never be his own again. But Charles has never been a fool.

In the bath, Erik takes hold of soap and insists on tracing every available bit of Charles’s skin with it. He even washes his hair. After that, his shirt becomes wet because of unfortunate splashes of soapy water and Charles’s cock grows heavy. His body feels strained with sensual tension.

When Erik reaches between his legs for his cock, Charles lets his knees fall apart. Agitated no more, he throws his head back as Erik tugs at his hardness, rubs his cockhead and then makes Charles see blue magic lines turn blindingly white.

 

***  


 

Erik is undressing quietly and efficiently. Charles almost wishes he had taken his time, because the man looks stunning. Not only his face, which should be and is actually cut in stone in the capital’s central atrium. He recalls that old statue now. It’s just like legends are saying – Erik is sculptured like a warrior. He is on the lean side, tall and wired. His member looks formidable even half-hard and Charles swallows down a lustful sigh. Because, judging from the earlier performance, it seems that his soon-to-be lover is a man gifted in the bedroom as well as on the battlefield.

“You’re beautiful,” Charles says dreamily.

Erik comes up to the side of the bed, where Charles is laid, smiling dazedly. Erik tilts his head, contemplating something.

“You ought not fall asleep before we’re done. You’re barely hanging on to the last shreds of your life force. Describe me what you felt when I made you come.”

“It’s a sensation impossible to depict,” grins Charles. “Magic turned white, as though there was some field around us… I felt free. Weightless. When you did that… that thing…”

“You’re slipping into delirium. Your soul is dimming,” Erik frowns handsomely. “Probably, I should have waited until we connect directly. Can you sit up?”

“Connect? You’re lovely… Great cock, but so big. I have never had anyone fuck me in real world. Demons and their realm don’t count, right? So, please, heed my concerns…” asks Charles lamely.

He doesn’t understand what makes the darkness around Erik grow. He looks angry.

“You didn’t tell me.”

Charles just sighs.

When Erik finally joins him in bed and their naked bodies press together, Charles arches up, hungry for another instant of blinding bliss.

“This explains a lot,” says Erik harshly, cupping Charles’s face and looking into his eyes. “Charles, I assure you that you’ll live to cause these damned creations of beyond defeat. I wanted to delay it but… Listen to me. Better still, I’m making you my apprentice. You’re my responsibility now.”

Erik is telling him something important, but right now Charles is more fascinated with his lips than words which leave them. He tilts his chin up to touch Erik’s lips with his.

Erik stops talking, as he stills upon Charles’s attempt to kiss him. Then, he presses his mouth to Charles’s, who opens his lips willingly. Erik kisses him ardently, tongue in mouth. Charles tries to keep up, but only succeeds in responding. It’s so good, that he feels drunk on it.

The kiss last and lasts until something in Charles shifts, some vital link in him slots into place and he shivers from head to toe. Suddenly, he’s aware of his dazedness dissolving. In its place, there’s jovial lust and some nameless brightness.

Erik dives in for another kiss and Charles meets his vigor with excitement of the same kind. He spreads his thighs, welcoming Erik to press their cocks together. Erik does better. He grabs their members and Charles sobs, then groans, as delicious friction brings tears to the corners of his eyes.

That familiar, yet alien feeling of a knot in his lower belly. It comes again. The knot is growing firmer, hotter, tighter. Until it bursts to bits and Charles releases a cry and comes hard. Erik follows him in a moment. While Charles is relishing in newfound heaven, a slick finger brushes over his oversensitive lips, which feel impossibly full. As though all that kissing robbed his lips of skin.

“Open your mouth, Charles.”

His mouth opens as ordered and Erik pushes two fingers inside. Sighing, Charles accepts the intrusion and sucks at Erik’s fingers, making sure to swirl his tongue around the digits to collect all semen.

Erik scoops some more and feeds it to him again.

“We are connected now,” tells him Erik, as Charles swallows around his fingers. When Erik pulls them out of his mouth it happens with an obscene slurping sound.

“Are we, Master?” he smiles then, looking up. “I think I heard something about you accepting me.”

He intends to tease, but Erik scrutinizes him with a weird, calculating look. Charles sees his real, grey-blue eyes through the perpetual veil of dark. 

“I’d rather be safe than sorry,” Erik says. “You ought to be fine. Are you tired?”

“Now that you mention it, I do feel sleepy. But in a good way.”

Erik nods and places his hand, tingling with magic, above Charles’s heart.

“Very well. May your repose be guarded with fair spirits. Now, sleep.”

 

 

 


	8. Chapter 8

 

 

 

 

Charles looks down from the narrow window in his chamber. He inhales in sharp fascination, because the stone hedge surrounding the Tower looks like a ring from this height. When he cranes his neck to the right he can discern the garden or what passes for it in Erik’s stronghold.

The river must be over that hill. And over there lies a village he has passed on the way here. Charles looks in that direction wistfully. While he’s putting on new clothes, which fit him strangely well, he wonders what he will do. Now, since Erik has taken him in… After Erik’s name springs to mind, his consciousness treats him to many repetitive, shameful thoughts of Erik and him together.

Demons are there. Subdued today, hissing at him and cussing Erik from time to time. Charles decides he can live with that. He tests his awakened senses to trace his Master’s whereabouts. Wherever Erik is in the Tower, magic currents tend to vibrate with slightly more pronounced frequency.

Erik is downstairs out of all places. In the Ground Hall as Charles now calls it. He is holding a black stuff with a green crystal at the top, clad in his usual dark red cloak. He looks up when Charles just shows around the corner.

“Come here quick,” Erik says and Charles hurries to him.

Erik waits until Charles is close enough to grab his forearm and drag him nearer. Charles’s exclamation gets squashed by Erik’s mouth. His kiss is aggressive and assertive and Charles hums in it, aroused by that particular combination. Their tongues brush together. It’s messy, wet and even less coordinated than last night’s, and heavens this is a fine good morning. Charles’s hand flies up to grab the front of Erik’s cloak. He wants Erik closer. He desires his Master right here and right now…

Erik breaks the kiss as abruptly as he has started.

“My presence is required on the border. Eat. Check if the wards need strengthening outside. Translate the scroll: it lies on your table in the library. Remember, when you go out, don’t venture far from the wards.”

Library? Yesterday, Charles could only dream of peeking into the library.

“Oh,” Charles asks, “When – “

“Today. Soon. Between you and King’s lost squad, I choose you. Now, step aside.”

Charles stumbles a few steps back while Erik raises his hand, pulling at the power lines. A teleportation seal blooms under his feet, rises up in the air and expands. The blue light of pure energy reflects in Charles’s eyes and then vanishes together with Erik and the seal.

Too long prohibited from entering the library, Charles immediately goes up there. He pushes the doors open, grinning like a loon.

When he gets thirsty he conjures himself a little water in the cup standing on one of the shelves. And then goes back to translation. He feels useful, responsible and finally, finally learning something. Even if there are only tedious theoretical calculations depicting a construction of a flying golem. Everything is so incredible that he might burst into happy tears.

“Charles.”

He jolts and his quill scratches a curved line along parchment.

“You are so early!” he turns in his seat, delighted.

No longer distracted by work, he discovers that his head is throbbing. Probably, from excitement.

Erik gives him a long skeptical look.

Charles then stares at the single sunray, piercing the space between them. The angle looks low.

“Um, I forgot about time,” he says unnecessarily, blinking through a mist gathering round his eyes.

When he lifts his hand to brush aside his fringe, it trembles. Erik notices.

“You act like a child that you still are. Your body and spirit were so exhausted, that yesterday you might have breathed your last breath. Today, however, you neglected my orders to take care of yourself and thus disappointed me.”

Erik did tell him to eat and go out. Charles cringes and bites his lip. The sense of shame returns and it’s much worse, because he is at fault.

“I’m sorry, tell me what – “

“What are you writing?” Erik looks over his shoulder at the parchment.

“Well, I finished the scroll. And, I’ve been analyzing my _geis_. I thought it needed to be documented and researched, because if I’d ever confront that kind of binding curse again – “

Wordlessly, Erik grabs his collar and hoists Charles up and then bends him over the table. Charles’s forehead thumps against wood and he hisses as Erik puts his hand on the back of his neck and holds it there, preventing him from wriggling. As if Charles has any strength to struggle. He doesn’t. With shock and terror, he physically feels his mind slipping, retreating back to the edge of the abyss.

“What did your research tell you?” asks Erik conversationally.

“I… this is what I think. That we need to blend our auras together, our energies must synchronize for it to work… to ground me here, to,” Charles jerks back when Erik promptly grabs his cock through his pants, tugging at it ruthlessly. When he cups Charles’s balls and rolls them in his hand Charles’s mouth falls open. A conflicting rush of shame, guilt and above all lust makes his eyes water and his blood boil.

Erik alternates between toying with his genitals and tugging at them roughly until Charles starts pressing his pelvis into Erik’s masterful touch, moaning, looking for a release.

“Your body complies splendidly. In shortest possible time you come alive under my caress straightaway… Must be a disposition you possess. A divine luck of yours, for I would hardly spare more patience. Go on talking, Charles, I’m right here and I’m listening,” Erik’s straining prick rubs against his clad ass.

Charles goes out of his head for a few heartbeats.

“We… ah, we need to exchange vital fluids… You were doing it this morning, with intent,” he gets in between pants as Erik squeezes his cock and pulls it especially hard. “The kiss… Yesterday, you kissed me too and you fed me your semen. What I, I can’t understand – “

Meanwhile, Erik lets go of his neck – he needs two hands to fold up Charles’s tunic and loosen his pants.

“You have an idea in that pretty head of yours, do you not?” asks Erik, while he is pushing Charles’s pants down to his knees. “I can sense that you know, but you can’t voice it. I tied myself to you, you stupid child, and what I get as a reward for my unprecedented consideration? Oh, only I won’t follow you to the abyss should you succumb, I have a special place reserved for me in the nether.”

Charles feels like someone knocked all air from his chest.

“Oh, Erik,” he twists his head to the side, leaning on one elbow. “I didn’t know… Oh heavens, you shouldn’t have…”

“You’re crying,” points out Erik, “and your cock is shrinking.”

“Please, don’t stop,” says Charles weakly, stifling a sob.

“Oh, come up here, impossible creature,” Erik helps him turn around and sit on the table facing him.

With his pants still awkwardly twisted just above his knees and his bare cock on display Charles dares not look into Erik’s eyes.

“Charles, can you look at me?”

Charles nods, wiping his eyes with the back of his trembling hand and bracing himself. When he looks up, though, Erik is watching him attentively, wearing the same thoughtful look as yesterday.

“We need to fuck,” he states.

“Fine,” nods Charles stiffly, trying to tone down the torrent of feelings tearing his soul apart. “How do you want me now?”

“Hold on, maybe you want me? What do you want to do to me?”

Charles flashes red and his deflated cock fills up a bit at the suggestion.

“Maybe that is the cause of your agitation, if so – “

“No, no. Yes, I want you, to possess you like that. To practice that with you? Of course,” Charles stammers, regretting that the language fails him, “but I… now, at the moment, I enjoy what you’ve been doing to me… the enjoyment I anticipate… you entering me. What I desire is you. Um, your cock inside me, in my – “

“Mouth or anus?” Erik is really not human asking him that.

“Oh, please, you are killing me… Oh, sweet heavens. Both,” croaks Charles.

“You are free to desire that particular activity, but this rapid progression doesn’t settle well with me. A tight, never breached asshole like you have should be carefully prepared. In advance, with additional management it can be done,” indicates Erik and at that Charles clasps Erik’s cloak and buries his face in his chest.

“Please, have pity on me...”

Erik ignores him, of course.

“Maybe, you want me to hurt you? To enter your anally without preparation?”

“No, no hurting,” Charles quickly shakes his head and then calls for courage, “maybe, you can hurt me a little… later. Now, don’t. Please, don’t.”

“Very well. There’re different modes of pleasure-taking, which I’d like to try out with you.”

“I’m glad,” Charles sighs, “very glad that this is you. You are very thoughtful… about all of this, like any proper mage should be. Another lesson for me, do you agree?”

“Yes. Well, initially I intended to make you come from my caress, whichever you might prefer. As for myself I would rather enjoy fucking that tightness between your legs. Up there you may clench your muscles, press thighs together…”

“Fine,” Charles glances up at Erik and then immediately drops his eyes down. “The least I can do for you. I can make your cock wet. My mouth… Can I?”  


 

 

 

 


	9. Chapter 9

 

 

 

Evening in the library ends with a beneficial mutual agreement and a discovery that having Erik’s thick cock hammer in between his clenched thighs is unexpectedly delightful and an marvelous way to open up new horizons of taking pleasure from each other.

Later at night, after a dinner and a stroll around the Tower, throughout the duration of which Erik let him work on wards, Charles ends up naked in his magnificent large bed, on his front.

Erik is petting his back and ass. He hasn’t touched Charles’s hole or his heated cock yet. He seems fine with exploring the flesh only. Charles is still exhausted. He sighs every time Erik presses a kiss to a spot, which shouldn’t be so damnably sensitive but is.

“You have freckles here,” Erik traces the dots on his upper back with his tongue, “and even lower. Hm, interesting…”

Since Erik’s kisses involve teeth, soon, an entire exploration turns Charles’s skin wonderfully hot, as tiny tingling spots flare up.

After a while, the low humming arousal exhausts itself and he is stuck on the edge of falling asleep. As he fails to smother a yawn, Erik pauses, his thumbs rubbing two parallel lines along Charles’s spine.

“Already done?”

“Sorry, I just… You’ve forced my mind to shut itself down, in the most splendid way. So soothing.”

“You are delicious,” murmurs Erik, “and appallingly trusting. Perhaps, I’m just waiting until you’re overwhelmed with comfort and I might use you however I want.”

“Do you really?” smiles Charles into the blankets. He quite likes the idea.

“Use you? Oh, yes. To the depths of your ass,” Erik’s hands drift lower to spread his buttocks, “after having mused for a while, I’m thinking, that this entrance of yours is too beckoning to let it stay unpierced longer. Especially since you’re so eager to be filled, to charge into pleasures your little hole can deliver… to you and to an insertive party.”

“I’d like to give you free reins, but after your earlier words I feel it’s best to reconsider charging in at once,” Charles props himself on the elbows, frowning a little. Then, he almost rolls his eyes. “Or, wait, have you been mocking me? You have!”

Erik laughs a fine, quiet laugh, which resonates in Charles’s chest with warmth different from the arousal.

“Allow me to keep that a secret,” retorts Erik with ease and lets go of his buttocks. “Now, on your knees, Charles. Yes, good. Stay like that, on your elbows. Spread your legs apart for me.”

Charles discovers that spreading his legs means showing his gap, his hole. Unprompted, his pucker tightens in lovely embarrassment at the realization that Erik is now looking at it, witnessing the clenching.

“Yes, bare it for me,” encourages him Erik. “Good, very good. Loosen up if you might.”

Charles feels his ass being grabbed and squeezed strongly and he lets out a groan full of expectation.

“Untouched and tight as expected,” Erik puts one fingertip on the clenched up pucker, pressing inside. “Look how it resists a finger right now, but will be soon welcoming my cock. If I work your ass thoroughly, would you be able to take two pricks up here at once?”

Charles nearly jolts at the picture in his head. He’d love to. He imagines it must feel unforgettable.

His focus returns to real world. A real, wet brush sliding towards his opening has him panting heavily. Erik presses his thumbs in the area between his cock and anus as he licks the circle around Charles’s hole. When his wet tongue swirls across the pucker itself, again and again, Charles cries out loud. The sensation shoots right through his member.

“Now, your other hole is yawning at me,” huffs Erik petting the moist rim with a fingertip, “let me give it a good night kiss it’s begging for.”

Erik blows a breath onto the anus, forcing Charles to clench again. And then he simply feasts on Charles’s ass, nibbling, probing and licking around and into his hole. As Erik’s tongue pierces him for the first time and therefore establishes a chaotic rhythm of in, out, around, Charles starts moaning Erik’s name. His legs begin to shake, threatening to fold. His cock is very, very hard.

Erik finishes him off after he rearranges Charles on his back. With Charles’s legs over his shoulders, crossed behind his neck, and Charles’s leaking cock in his mouth.

One of the two things Charles remembers before falling asleep is being fed the fat tip of Erik’s erect cock, his lips stretched around the cockhead, sucking gently. The second one is a pool of seed in his mouth, persistent taste of salt, him gagging a bit and then gulping down.

He also imagines Erik might have kissed him afterwards, but he is not sure.

 

 

***

 

 

“Steady, hold it steady,” says Erik from behind his back, while Charles tries and fails to contain an energy sphere in between his outstretched hands.

The sphere hisses like a reptile and its flares tickle Charles’s hands like warm tongues. He lets out a careful breath, relived that he managed to contain it. Wrong. The blue flare whips at him and Charles loses his painstaking focus with a startled gulp.

The sphere bursts into a waterfall of sparks and Charles drops his hands down in frustration. He really doesn’t understand what’s wrong. Control has always been among his most prominent strengths.

“Keep up trying,” drops Erik and promptly leaves, abandoning Charles in the Ground Hall.

Charles looks down at the intricate seal carved in stone floor. There are many things Charles doesn’t know about the Tower, so he asks Erik and sometimes Erik answers. But, most times, Erik chooses to stay silent. He didn’t say anything about the energy lines Charles started seeing. He refused to talk about the darkness shrouding him, though he smirked and told Charles to catch up on his reading.

After another failure Charles shakes tension from his hands and refocuses his eyes on magic lines around and about. Magic is always about mastering one’s natural girts and affiliations with the cognizant effort. There has to be something off with him.

High time to switch tactics: he sits on the ground, cross-legged, and allows his mind a liberty to roam. Thoughts flood his head.

He thinks that Erik wants him to study on his own. He is willing to provide Charles with resources, to scold him for mistakes, but he won’t explain things which Charles might master without his help. And he is so good in the bedroom, that Charles can often overlook his rough attitudes and bouts of silent treatment.

He thinks of Erik’s mouth, his beautifully proportioned chest and shoulders, his cock, long, lean legs. In the privacy of his mind he can embrace his overwhelming lust. He truly doesn’t know are these his feelings or is it the curse. He might never find out. He thinks something inside him is probably hopelessly broken after what he has been through and Erik seems to know it.

He thinks about an ocean of self-deprecation, which lulls him deeper, whispering that he is whoring himself, that he should choose death over disgrace, that he is unworthy of being called a mage, that the only position he is able to achieve is prone or, in this case, on his knees… his ass ready to receive cock. Charles feels humiliated and aroused at the same time and now he knows which feeling will win in the end, which fire he’ll succumb to… ready and pleading for more.

He used to dream of having a family one of these days. One he never had. As he is sitting on the literal gate to the hellish realm, tied up to the living legend of the man, his very soul stuck in between the worlds, he must bid that fleeting dream a farewell.   

He realizes that he didn’t spare time for proper grieving and now, as tears are flowing, and sadness overcomes him, he is becoming lighter, his mind clearing, his broken heart crumbled to pieces, but at least he’s alive.

When Erik finds him practicing outside, Charles is holding up a sphere of energy, swirling in perfect synchronicity. The collar of his shirt feels damp with sweat and Charles is flushed from exhaustion. He smiles proudly and Erik nods.

“Practice maintaining two at once tomorrow,” he says and pauses, as if thinking of something. “Would you like to join me on the top?”

Charles looks up, nervous. Even from here, he can see a pulsing stream of collected magic forming a vortex right over the top of the Tower.

“Fear not,” notices his hesitation Erik, “I won’t push you off the ledge.”

Charles chuckles, but then holds his breath.

“Would it hurt you if I died?”

“It depends.”

Erik turns back to the Tower and Charles follows. They are taking the winding stairs up when his Master speaks again.

“If you succumb to the High Demon, my defenses will crash down, and thus I won’t be able to hold him at bay. Will it hurt me? Perhaps. I’ve never been to nether before, so I can only assume the worst, for nether is where the Chaos itself was born.”

“I can’t take my life… Can’t go away. Can’t give in. What if I asked you to kill me? In a way that doesn’t involve hurting you through the connection?”

“Hm, that’s an interesting subject,” Erik muses. “I recall an elfish ritual that can be used to isolate your soul from mine, to weaken the link temporarily. And then, it might be done.”

Charles sighs as another weight lifts off his shoulders.

They arrive on the top in time to meet a hippogriff landing on the flat round pad, surrounded by sharp horn-like protrusions, which, as Charles can witness now, are there to accumulate magic.

A rather fat gnome, wearing nicely decorated armor, jumps from the hippogriff’s back and when his dark eyes fall on Charles they widen comically.

He quickly gathers his wits and bows to greet Erik. When, after another glance at Charles, standing by his Master’s side, he addresses him the bow as well. Charles smiles a little and bows in return. This exchange is interrupted by Erik speaking the words Charles doesn’t understand and the gnome handing him a satchel. Charles realizes that listening in to their exchange is futile. He is more proficient in dead languages than in living.

The hippogriff, though, is fascinating up close. Charles carefully puts one foot in front of the other, while approaching the creature, but the hippogriff seems calm. It tilts its big head curiously, peering at Charles with one big brown eye. A well-trained hippogriff is a splendid companion, he has heard. Strong and very loyal.

Up close, Charles, overcome with newfound courage, gives in to temptation and pets the neck covered in thick, silk feathers. The hippogriff twists his neck and his beak clacks right next to Charles’s hand, which he snatches away.

“I’m sorry,” he stammers, whirling back, where Erik and the gnome are looking at him.

The gnome is gesticulating, talking quickly, pointing at the hippogriff.

“You might touch it all you want, Charles. This is what he’s trying to say. Though his bird dislikes humans you should be fine, because you don’t smell like one,” translates Erik.

“I didn’t know they had a developed sense of smell,” says Charles until the rest of the sentence settles in, as he absently strokes a big round head and then the neck. Hippogriff clacks again and rubs his head against Charles’s shoulder. He jolts, startled at first, but then relaxes and returns the caress.

When the gnome mounts it and the hippogriff jumps in the air, stretching its blue wings, something clenches in Charles’s chest.

 

 

 


	10. Chapter 10

 

 

 

While the water in his bath grows cold, warmth starts pulling in his insides, because he anticipates an evening with Erik. Not in this bath, it’s too small. Maybe, this is another thing to try later. Charles’s face grows red and hot. He draws one knee higher to his chest. Water splashes around and he stills. Charles slowly slides his hand from his inner thigh down to his groin. He clasps his cock lightly, moves his hand up and down the shaft, but it makes no difference.

Since the Tower has corrupted his mind and body, he can’t achieve release when pleasuring himself. The feeling of satisfaction is not there. It makes sense that such condition is exercised, otherwise he could simply drive himself to completion now and then. No, it has to be someone else. He can think of Erik and become excited, but he can’t do anything about it on his own.

Charles sighs, but decides to proceed. His fingertips brush his tight, curled up hole and he presses a finger inside. His digit digs in the rimmed entrance and his face gets hotter than before. It’s really sensitive. As though it was just waiting for some attention. Heavens… Tight and warm. Feels so good, yet weirdly disconnected from his body. He toys with his hole lightly for a bit, just with a tip of one finger. That first time… Erik has put his tongue in it… his mouth on Charles’s ass which was one of the loveliest surprises Charles has ever experienced.

He steps out of the bath unfulfilled, but calmer, stretching his back, thinking that it would be nice to stretch his legs too and go for a walk in the… Charles shakes his head and tries to clear his mind while putting on clothes. He thinks hard about the paradoxial flow of time within the Tower – his Master mentioned it earlier today and Charles stocked up his table with manuscripts and scrolls intent to study the subject. He lets his curiosity lead him away from troubling feelings.

“It’s a decent progress for a month of practicing,” mentioned Erik when Charles demonstrated him a spell to call upon a powerful water spirit he’s learned in between studying in the library, vigorous energy maintenance and intense fucking with his unbelievably attractive Master.

Privately, Charles thought that his progress was much more than simply decent, but a different thing stirred his attention.

“Excuse my asking,” he dismissed the water spirit and turned to Erik. “But a month? I thought, I spent here… let me see. Since you, since the first time we… Oh?”

Account of days was strangely vague in his mind. He remembered everything, but some things, when he turned to them, seemed improperly stretched. Some seemed to be just glimpses.

“It’s dangerous to let go of your time account in the Tower. It will turn it against you as it is the most instable point in the entire realm. I can’t follow it either, because it is always different. Like weather. Have you noticed anything about you that is irregular?”

Charles touched his chin, which was smooth, because he refused to look like Academy folk, and he recalled that he didn’t remember when was the last time he shaved. He did, in his new bathroom, in front of a dull mirror, but when was it?

“If the flow happens to be asymmetrical, twisted… Is it twisted only for me? Or is it twisted for the space within the Tower?”

Erik shrugs and Charles smiles lopsidedly.

“Library. Thank you for your guidance.”

Charles chases the vision away and shuts the doors to his chamber. Erik seems to be somewhere on the lower levels. He takes the steps down and his path leads him to the chamber he has never been in before. The door is open, so he steps in and sees rows upon rows of various weaponry, mounting up the tall shelves. Charles squints at it. From what he knows, this is not the proper way to preserve weapons. The blue light is spilling from the far corner and Charles calls:  
  
“Master? Erik?”

“Why are you shouting?” says Erik from behind his back and Charles thrusts up a hand with an attacking seal forming, which Erik catches and dismisses with a sizzle of sparks.

“Slow. Lethal,” he says, using his hold on Charles’s wrist to draw him closer.

“I promise to get better,” Charles tilts his neck up to brush their lips together and slowly backs Erik into the nearest wall.

Erik is only a couple of inches taller, and their corporeal, physical difference doesn’t feel threatening as such. Unless Charles refocuses on otherworldly, on concentrated aura around Erik and oh… he sighs lustfully, thinking that there is one part of Erik that feels daunting in a good way. Erik buries his nose in Charles’s hair as his hands land on the small of his back. Charles is pressing small kisses to his throat, while Erik is rubbing his buttocks through a layer of clothes. They are both hard so fast that it seems surreal.

When Charles pauses to catch a breath, Erik puts a hand on Charles’s shoulder, pressing it down.   

“I believe I don’t need to ask.”

Charles drops to his knees, willing and shamelessly eager.

Erik frees his cock for him and Charles licks his palm before wrapping it round the member. He moves his hand up and down a few times, with keen appreciation. Then, he holds the cock in position and opens his mouth. Erik makes a strangled sound and Charles wonders what he sees, because blue twilight gives Charles a bizarre sight of a dark thick shaft. As Charles slowly, very slowly runs his tongue in a circular motion around the tip, Erik starts breathing heavily.

It’s not the first time Charles is handling Erik’s considerable cock, so he learned that he can’t put all of it in his mouth. Maybe not yet. He can’t suck it for long, because his jaw begins to hurt. And he has to use his hands to please Erik as well as Erik pleases him. As he moves his hand lightly up and down in time with pressing wet open-mouthed kisses to a cockhead, stroking the top of that exquisite prick with his tongue, his other hand plays with the balls, tugs at them gently.

When Charles hears a drawn-out moan, he closes his lips around the hot leaking head, opens his mouth wide and tries to take in what he can. It’s not much, but he holds his mouth like that, a picture-perfect circle, the cock sliding in and out. Moving on Erik’s cock in his own rhythm. A wet hole for Erik to spill into. He lays one hand on Erik’s hip and feels his tense body shudder, so he sucks a little harder, twists his hand a bit more. Erik groans and spills and Charles gags, because swallowing still needs practice. Chasing the seeping seed, Charles licks his lips. He is dazed and he is breathing heavily, because his own cock is begging for relief.

When Erik offers him a hand to help him up, Charles grabs it like a lifeline.

“Please, I want to come,” he moans, cock hot and hard between his legs.

“Not here,” Erik’s voice is still raspy as he is dragging his thumb across Charles’s full lips, wet with his spunk and spit, “I want to spread you properly.”

“You are impossible,” whimpers Charles before Erik kisses him on the mouth, forcing his lips to part.

Erik drags him up to his room and when he starts helping Charles undress, Charles sees it.

“Heaven, what happened to your hands!?” Charles presses his palms to Erik’s chest. “Let’s stop, Erik.”

Erik, whose hands, peeking out of loose cuffs, as far as Charles can see, are dark and wrinkled like burnt corpse’s, looks Charles in the eyes.

“It doesn’t hurt me as it would have hurt you. No,” noticing that Charles began incantation, he takes Charles’s hand in his. “Rough, dry, irritated, but perfectly functional. And I anticipated fucking today.”

Of course, Erik is anticipating it. This is part of daily routine within these walls – fucking Charles. Not that Charles protests, because it has been very, very good lately.

“I’m one with the Tower and the Tower is one with me,” says Erik suddenly. “This means, that I am, was, will be a more or less fixed point in this realm.”

Charles covers Erik’s dark hand with his and frowns. Erik, who doesn’t remember names and faces, who doesn’t need much sleep, who doesn’t… feel like Charles does. Though, Charles is no proper evaluation subject.

“What caused this?”

And then he recalls an icy prick of headache striking while he was reading in the library. He doubled over with pain, followed by a sick twist in his abdomen. He thought, he had dreamed it.  

“A breach?” Charles mouths almost soundlessly, growing cold.

“You are very attuned to the Tower,” observes Erik. “A persistent habit to channel magic with both hands sometimes backfires.”

Charles leans to kiss him and Erik responds, but Charles almost immediately breaks the connection.

“I want to fuck you,” Charles says resolutely, in a low voice. “You said you don’t mind – ”

“Don’t impose limits on yourself, Charles,” Erik touches his cheek with a dry, black hand, “I don’t mind. It will be interesting to try. Your very fabulous mouth and your cock in one day. You are not the one with a particular fantasy fixed in your mind, I’ll have you know.”

So Charles fucks him. With minimal preparation, because Erik insisted he wanted it that way and Charles is sloppy with it anyways. He doesn’t feel that he is doing it right, but when he pushes in Erik’s ass, it is tight and hot and everything Charles dreamed of. And Charles forgets about his worries for a moment.

“Make it fast and hard, Charles,” grits Erik when Charles starts with slow motions.

“I can’t,” rasps Charles, though he should be saying that he won’t last a minute if he goes faster.

But Erik adds please and he doesn’t have a choice.

When Charles’s cock starts to throb he hesitates, but decides to come inside. Filling up Erik is bliss, pure and beautiful, very intimate, and Charles is already longing for it when it swims away, robbing his arms of strength, making him fall right onto Erik.

“Sorry,” he whispers, kissing the back of Erik’s neck in apology. “I will move.”

He rolls on his back and honestly doesn’t expect Erik to sit up and turn to him. Charles’s limbs are still trembling from satisfying exhaustion, but this is Erik, he thinks. The Guardian. Not human in many ways.

“Was it – “

“Good. You were good,” Erik even smiles a little. “Thank you, Charles.”

It might be a trick of light, but his hands don’t look that dark anymore. Charles thinks that it means something, but the thought dissolves in the clutches of a dream.

 

 

 

 


	11. Chapter 11

 

 

 

 

Charles has been fucked good and slow: first by the alignment of Erik’s clever fingers in his hole and Erik coming in his ass for the first time, then by rubbing their erections together, hard and on the verge of painful. Oh, so nice.

“I might have a surprise for you,” says Erik, as he is getting dressed, while Charles is spread on the bed, catching his breath.

“I love surprises,” Charles smiles lazily, rolling on his back. He is fighting the persistent urge to go back to sleep.

Erik’s hands are already back to normal. Charles has been enjoying Erik’s fingers up his ass all evening yesterday and today’s morning.

“What are your plans for today?”

“Check the wards, check if there is enough mana potion, sort your letters, practice Frostbolt,” recites Charles slowly, still coming down from the high of release.

This once Erik has put three fingers in Charles and, after deeming him sufficiently stretched, teased Charles with the tip of his dripping cock, rubbing slick all over his pucker. He positioned his cock right at the target and pushed into Charles’s entrance. Only a bit. It hurt and Charles strained to keep silent. He was glad that he had his face smashed into a pillow and Erik couldn’t see him biting his lip and squeezing his eyes shut. But Erik didn’t move past the resistance. He petted the stretched rim of Charles’s sensitive anus with his thumbs, casually commenting on tightness and heat. Next, he stroked his shaft and his sperm shoot right into Charles’s waiting, but still so tight hole. Wet on the inside, with cock dripping milky seed between his obscenely spread legs, Charles came the moment Erik reached around to squeeze his balls.  

“Enjoy. Now you’re full of my fuck. Just like you wanted,” told him Erik, as his cock slipped out of Charles.

Hot squelch of come from Charles’s ass accompanied his words.

When Charles moves around his chamber, he discovers that the feeling of soreness in his behind is quite gratifying. In the privacy of his own quarters he dares reach around and probe his moist and tender anus. It feels like Erik’s cock is still opening him up down there. He gently brushes his pucker, moaning at the dull ache and blushing at the last squirt of spunk it dishes out.

After a quick clean up, he searches the clothes trunk for something to tie his hair with. Locks started to get in the way, falling in his eyes at times, so tying it seems like a wise decision. He absently muses what Erik does with his longer than shoulder-length hair, for it seems to look the same since the first time Charles has laid eyes on his Master. Everything about Erik is devoid of ordinary transiency. Is transiency progressing too slow for a human eye?

Charles pulls out a blue ribbon tying up a handwoven ornate waistcoat. He brushes his hair back into a low pony tail and fastens it with a ribbon. After dressing up in his preferable, comfortable and soft outfit from the truck, which Erik has said belonged to the High Priest, Charles debates the jacket. He might go outside or not.

He decides to check what the weather is in the outside world and immediately runs out of his room.

When he swings open the door to Erik’s study, Erik looks up with a scowl. Charles sees the scroll in his hands smoldering.

“I hope you can explain your barging in here as if you can disturb me at your will,” Erik puts one hand flat on the table and the table shakes a little.

Charles feels like he has suddenly stepped right into a well. He stopped drawing a line between Erik, his compulsory lover, and Erik, the Great Warlock, whose temper is as legendary as his victories. The forced isolation made him lose notion of etiquette and proper behavior.

“I apologize, Master,” Charles takes in a breath and straightens up. “I’m genuinely sorry to disturb you. Would you spare a moment to listen to what I have to say?”

“It seems you have not left me a choice. Speak, but keep in mind that I won’t tolerate your insolence. Let it be the last time I give you a warning.”

Charles nods, as primal fear rises again. Recently, he’s almost begun feeling fine. As if his spirit started healing. But truly? He is still just an inexperienced mage, obsessed with magically induced lust.

“The village,” he says, trying to keep his voice level. “There is dark smoke rising over the horizon. I mean, it’s really dark. I could see its essence even from my window.”

Erik narrows his eyes.

“I think people might need your help,” finishes Charles. “I can just tell that it is not an ordinary fire.”

“If you can tell, deal with it,” Erik says.

Charles stares at him.

“But the _geis_ won’t let me pass through the wards.”

“You obviously misunderstood. You can pass now. You just won’t survive out there for long as you’re physically and spiritually bound to this place. But you are also bound to me. It grants you a slight opening.”

“How slight?” Charles holds his breath.

Erik dismisses him by nodding to the door.

Charles dashes back to his chamber to fetch a cloak. When he is standing by the arch, he feels a tight lump in his throat. His fear has become his true jailor.

“Charles,” Erik calls suddenly and Charles whips around.

Erik is standing at the entrance to the Tower, beckoning him in.

As soon as Charles steps closer, the teleportation seal blooms under Erik’s feet reaching Charles too.

“It will be faster,” explains Erik and after a brief instant of hesitation Charles stands by his side.

The whirlpool of blue energy explodes and dissolves and Charles braces himself for customary awkwardness of travelling through nether.

Erik transports them right on the top of the hill overlooking the village and Charles’s eyes widen at the gory sight. There used to be about ten windmills on the riverbanks. Now there are smoldering ruins. Thick, clogging miasma is being emitted from the cracks in the ground. The smell of rotting meat hits Charles at once. Even before he sees the bodies he knows they are there.

By his side, Erik stands stiff and tall. He observes everything dispassionately.

Charles tries to borrow at least some of Erik’s presence of mind. If he starts panicking, he definitely won’t be helping anyone. He looks again. Torn holes in the ground. Torn limbs and dark blood. He swallows. Some of the fallen are wearing armor. With royal crest on it. What is going on?

“Over there,” he exclaims, when he sees the flash of something through the line of trees and then the screams back up his guess.

Charles starts running in that direction, mentally reading the spell. It comes to him fast. Faster as ever. And before he can even be surprised he crosses the tree line. Two knights have fallen. Three knights are fighting two worm-like creatures with multiple teeth. The monsters are thick as water barrels and are as long as the fallen tree, which obstructs Charles’s way.

Charles releases a bolt of paralyzing spell and luck is on his side today, because it flies right into the open toothy mouth. The knight, who was overpowered by the monster springs to his feet almost immediately and Charles sees the flash of the magic sword as it cuts through that blind head.

He almost sags in relief, but the knight he has just saved looks up and a warning scream catches Charles off guard. He darts to the side, but something big slams intos him and he slams into a tree.

Charles comes to his senses and finds Erik helping him up.

“I am alright,” Charles murmurs, also surprised, because how can that be. He had just been slammed into the tree by the giant demonic worm, but nothing is broken. And it hurts only a little bit.

Over Erik’s shoulder he sees the pile of ashes in the middle of a little crater. Erik did that – comes a thought.

There is also a knight coming up to them. The one Charles has helped. Charles recognizes the ornament on the helmet.

It’s a full helmet, so when it is lifted Charles sees a young woman instead of a man. Her short brown hair is stuck to her forehead and she is flushed from battle. Other than that, her look is collected and a bit wary when she is eyeing Erik.

“Thank you, your Worship,” she bows her head to Erik. “We are truly lucky that you arrived to our aid.”

“Tell them to stop doing that,” Erik’s face twists into a grimace of slight irritation.

Charles turns to look at the beheaded worm, being poked by knights.

“Stand down,” she orders and the two scramble out of the way as the seal blooms on the ground, incinerating the second worm too.

While Erik is examining the burned windmills, Charles and the lady knight are left observing from the same distance.

“Thank you for saving my life,” she says meanwhile, staring at Erik’s back with a frown.

“You shouldn’t thank me. Anyone would do that.”

“Yeah. Any mage. Of course,” she drawls and turns to look him in the eye. “And who you might be?”

“Charles. The Great Warlock agreed to teach me, so –“

“How? Is it possible? It’s unheard of!” her dark eyes take him in with a new expression.

“I think, I was just persuasive enough,” Charles says simply, noting a weird echo in his head and fatigue in his limbs. How long has he been outside?

“… then the caravan disappeared I decided to check the tracks with my platoon. I have never seen beasts like these. I’ve lost five men before I realized that miasma was rotting living flesh. Even our armor is useless.”

“What about the villagers?” asks Charles, blinking hard.

“They are lucky that the tract doesn’t cross their village. I sent my personal guards to arrange protection and help evacuate everyone temporarily.”

“Thank heavens,” breathes out Charles.

“Are you alright? You look pale,” her words float as though through a dense fog.

Next, he is being supported by Erik and the feel of Erik’s body pressed to his clears up the fog a little.

“No, he is fine. Mind your own business, your Highness,” speaks Erik harshly and Charles closes his eyes again as magic pulls them through space.

 

 

 

 


	12. Chapter 12

 

 

 

Maybe, that’s the Tower doings.

Maybe, he has finally grown thick skin.

Yesterday’s events seem far away. Like it happened months ago. Him facing the beast, meeting that lady knight and then, apparently, being caught up in backlash. Those few hours were very eventful for Charles, who imagined being locked up forever with no omissions.

His Master is talking. What is going on with him today?

His mind hones on Erik again.

Erik is just putting a wooden box on the table. He opens it for Charles. The promised surprise.

Charles doesn’t know what he expected, but definitely not these… Pretty steel things, which are lying on the blue cushion in the box. Like they are jewelry.

“A butt plug. Stretch the anus carefully, slick up your butthole, slick up the plug and put it in,” Erik takes one and puts the thing into his outstretched palm. “The flared base will stop it from being lost inside you. Gnomes custom made it, so it’s as smooth as it can be. Four sizes. You’ll start with the smallest, of course. I suppose, it might help your ass get accustomed to penetration.”

Charles’s cock certainly responds to Erik’s words. He twirls the thing in his fingers, cautiously weighting it up. The one Erik gave him is as long as his finger, thick in the middle with a notch to hold it in place. Heavy. Really smooth, cold to touch. But it will warm up inside him. It will reach places… Then, he pictures Erik putting it in him, sealing up Charles’s hole for personal use. Erik might plug his ass up in the morning and let Charles wear it while studying. How will it feel to sit on a chair with this curious intrusion inside? It will probably move back and forth while he will be walking. The notion on being stimulated in that way is a perfect stimulation on its own. The biggest plug looks especially intimidating. It is almost as thick as an above average cock, and it must stretch him plenty.

“Will you,” Charles swallows, “will you put it in me?”

“Do you want me to do it?”

Charles nods.

“Fine.”

Charles passes it back to Erik.

“Later?” he says, when he realizes that they are still in Erik’s study and it is noon.

“I can do it now if you bare your ass for me and bend over the table,” Erik takes the smallest plug and turns to shelves to select oil. “I’d like to take a short break.”

“Yes, please,” Charles nods as a pool of warmth starts gathering in and above his groin.

He unfastens his pants and pushes them down to his knees. He thinks that will be enough, so he bends over Erik’s table and puts his folded arms on the surface. He shivers a bit when Erik comes up and uses two hands to spread Charles’s cheeks. Then, Charles feels as slickness is being rubbed around his rim. His hole quickly warms up to touch and Erik pushes a slick fingertip in it. Rubs and pushes in, circles and probes in. Again, and one more time, until Charles’s cock fills up nicely.

“When your ass is being tended to, every time you respond as if it’s your first time,” Erik pointedly drives his finger inside and Charles accepts it with a startled moan.

Then, Charles feels the second finger being pushed in beside the first. Erik abandons teasing and just proceeds nudging his fingers in and out mechanically, scissoring them slightly when they are inside. He adds more thick slick, spills it right on Charles’s hole and quickly scoops it and directs it in, so it doesn’t escape.

“I think you are ready,” pronounces Erik finally and Charles focuses on a cold touch against his wet pucker, on a pressure coming in, widening his anus a bit, his rim clamping around the intrusion snugly and surely as the plug settles within.

Charles breaths in an out, as his ass embraces the curious device. He notes that it feels somehow larger than it actually is and, heavens, but he thinks he already loves the feeling. Loves the light, kind pressure inside and gentle weight on his spot.

“It’s good,” he tells Erik, “no, better than good.”

Erik touches the top of the plug peeking out of his opening and twists it a little. Charles hisses.

“Looks good in you too,” Erik pets his ass with gentle strokes, which are so maddeningly light that Charles is ready to start knocking his forehead against the table.

“Listen, I,” Charles pants, “I need – could you do something?”

“Like what?” Erik twists the plug again.

“Like anything. Touch me, please,” Charles gets out, moaning a little when Erik pulls at the base of the plug, so that the larger part peeps out of his ass. His tender rim clenches around metal, trying to suck it back inside.

“I believe I can’t leave you unsatisfied.”

Saying that, Erik pushes the plug back inside, pulls at his collar and makes Charles stand upright. He takes Charles’s cock in his hand, but doesn’t let go of his collar as he proceeds rubbing the shaft with his oiled hand. Charles chases his grip almost involuntary. He starts fucking Erik’s hand with abandon – the slick and tight clutch it provides. Charles can’t stop moaning, while Erik works him roughly and efficiently. He jerks when he comes and his ejaculate lands on the table. His legs feel weak, so he leans back into Erik.

Erik tugs at his cock a few times to make sure that he has nothing left to give. His cock throbs and a spurt of come splashes next to his earlier mess. Charles moans in protest.

“Is this all you have got in you?” Erik pets his deflated cock as Charles clasps his wrist to stop the sensitive torture.

“Yes… Please, give me a moment,” Charles begs, heart beating loudly in his ears.

“Always so susceptive afterwards, aren’t you?” Erik embraces him from behind as Charles shuts his eyes tight, breathing in and out. “When you’re done recuperating I want your mouth on my cock.”

Charles gets out a sound of agreement. He has already had Erik coming in his mouth in the morning. And he didn’t do much sucking himself. By the time Erik milked an orgasm out of him, his Master was very hard and it took a few well-timed swallows to make him discharge his seed in Charles’s mouth.

Instead of making Charles kneel, Erik makes him sit on a bench below the window. Erik stands amid his spread knees, as Charles licks, strokes and tries to accommodate more of his cock. While the tip of Erik’s hot and pleasingly smooth length is resting within his mouth, the plug is resting within his ass. He can feel it so well – almost as though Erik has planned it that way. When Erik comes, he has the presence of mind not to drive his huge shaft down Charles’s throat. Though, this is the first time Erik runs his fingers through Charles’s hair. Urging him off his spent cock.

When Charles looks up, he discovers that Erik is looking down at him. His hand is cradling Charles’s head and Charles leans into the unexpected caress. His eyes are closing.

“You might wear the plug for a little longer,” says Erik. “If it doesn’t hurt.”

“I’d love to,” Charles can’t even think of standing up.

“You need your rest,” Erik states firmly and Charles feebly shakes his head.

“I don’t… Why am I so often terribly sleepy after we do it? As if… you know, my life force is getting low… Does it always happen? Maybe, this is just me. Something is not quite right with me… Do you know why?”

His eyesight is misty. It feels as though his head is swimming in thick liquid. Erik continues looking at him.

…And Charles wakes up in his bed.

Sunlight is still streaming through the window, which means that he hasn’t slept that much.

Charles discovers that he’s dressed, but his shirt is loose at the collar and his belt is off. He is also missing his boots. There is a sheet covering him and he pulls it tighter around himself. He is cold, though there is no reason for him to be.

He recalls Erik giving him something. Oh, it was in him. It still is. Charles can feel the intrusion now. It is nice, he decides. He dimly recalls Erik’s touch and heat. He is sure they did it in his study. He must have blacked out right afterwards.

This is actually embarrassing.

He takes a bath and contemplates the box Erik has left in his room. Charles puts the cleaned up plug back inside, contemplating everything that happened.

He ends up in a library, looking through tomes on demonology, not sure what exactly he is looking for.

Demons… Worms… Miasma. Thick black aura. It doesn’t add up.

Maybe, his general confusion is a reason why he attempts the unthinkable.

Late at night he puts out all lights in his chamber and looks out of the window. The full moon strokes the valley and Charles silently thanks the ancient goddess for silver light. The window is narrow, but his recent misadventures left him thinner and frailer. It might have been tricky to squeeze through window frame before, but it’s absolutely easy now.

He crouches on the edge, looking down.

Charles steps forward before his consciousness drives him back inside.

Free fall is amazingly scary and he activates the levitation spell a little too early, so he still lands hard.

He never teleported. He lacked strength and magic reserves for that, but right now he is sure. As if he’s done is thousand times. Charles can’t explain it, but he knows the configuration of the exact seal so well, that he hardly spares half of his focus as he pulls at the power lines with his hand and bends the space to his will.  
  
The Tower and its yard disappears.

 

 

 

 


	13. Chapter 13

 

 

 

Last warm days are almost over. He should have taken that into account.

Charles was so confused when he left, that it took a few moments to take in the view just to collect his thoughts.

The village is long asleep. No lights. The platoon is easy to spot.

But guards stop him at the bottom of the hill, where the tents are put.

“My name’s Charles. I’m the Warlock’s apprentice. I helped your people yesterday. Or was it a day before yesterday. It is always difficult to say now. Can I talk to your leader, please?”

 Charles could see the large campfire still burning and could hear people talking by the tents.

“Wait here,” said one helmeted figure and dissolved in the shadows, leaving Charles with two silent guards. None of the guards drops a word. Unfortunately for Charles, aching for a chat with another human being, they are too good at their job.

When the third guard appears in front of Charles again, Charles jolts as though hit with lightning.

“Her Highness is waiting for you by the campfire. Do you need me to escort you there, sir?”

“No, no. But thank you. I’m fine.”

They let him pass and while going up the hill, Charles feels eyes on his back.

When he sees the Warrior Princess for the second time, she is sitting on the rags by the fire. Her cheeks are flushed and her dark eyes are bright with blazing reflection. There is something simple and straightforward about the way she turns her head and gives him a half-smile and interrupts his bow.

“Let’s postpone the courtesy,” she tells him and turns to people, whose faces are part shadows. “Charles is the mage, who has saved my life and avenged sir Oliver. We shall share our fire tonight.”

Her words are met with low hum and Charles bows this time as he perceives it his clue to have a sit. He finds himself seated next to Princess. A person passing by pushes a full mug in his hands and he accepts it.

The night is still and rather cold. His front feels the warmth of fire, but his back doesn’t. Charles tilts his mug, tasting fresh bitterness of the drink he never had before. Well, he contemplates it for a bit and takes another swig. It gets even better.

He looks at Princess, dressed in a weird sleeveless thick coat and feels underdressed. Although, almost everyone is having a drink, she doesn’t. While people are talking and drinking she is just talking. Charles checks the sand glass he is wearing on a chain. He sat himself a tight limit and he doesn’t have much time left.

“What business do you have with me?” asks she, leaning a little closer.

Charles didn’t know what came upon him. Probably, some liquid courage from the mug.

“I’d like to know your name.”

She stares at him and there is a flash of steel in her expression which reminds him of Erik. She smiles, then.

“Folk is so fond of calling me different names for a reason. However,” she lowers her voice not to be overheard. “Moira. And I probably shouldn’t tell my name a random mage. But I almost died yesterday, I lost my mentor and though it might sound mad there is a persistent feeling that I can trust you.”

“Thank you,” Charles says, also lowering his voice. “Have you apprehended anyone responsible for the summoning?”

“Summoning?” she frowns and the world narrows down to two of them talking in hushed voices, as all sounds fade completely. “Explain.”

“I have discovered the mentioning of deadly, flesh eating miasma in the Library. There are no doubts that these are the workings of a necromancer. If those demonic creatures can be allegedly summoned or nurtured by an individual with considerable mana control, I can’t say the same about that miasma.”

“You claim that there is a necromancer acting, well, right under the Great Warlock’s nose? In his domain?” Moira narrows her eyes.

When she says it, it sounds stupid.

Erik has obtained the title of the Great Warlock after he led joined human and gnome forces to the Dark Citadel. They say he had killed the Grand Master himself. The last bridge between hell and human world as the legends are saying. But he wasn’t. Charles can hear demons now if he lets his mind wander and he is almost sure his Master can do that too.

“Yes,” despite his inner conflicting thoughts Charles nods with confidence. “I believe, someone is practicing necromancy in this domain.”

“Did you tell him about it?... Well, it’s not my business,” she answers her own question too quickly and Charles doesn’t even know what gave him away.

“I should be going, your Highness,” Charles puts down the mug.

“Fine,” she looks down, thinking, then back at him. “Thank you for telling me this. May Heaven guard you.”

“May Heaven guard you,” replies Charles, clasping hands in front of chest.

 

 

***

 

  
Charles takes one more risk tonight and tries teleporting on top of the Tower.

 It appears to be very easy. When the seal fades away, Charles’s eyes linger on the horizon. He has been outside again. Only for about an hour, but heavens, how much he missed it.

Magic hums around and above him, restoring his strength. He can do that. He can teleport. More importantly, he can have a glimpse of world back.

Charles sits on the stone and cautiously opens his mind to voices and background sizzling of power lines. Unlike earlier, everything floats by and he remains untouched and unbothered by cacophony. The center of everything. His focus is in his core. This time, when he opens his eyes and reaches for magic the lines bend towards him and…

“Charles,” Erik’s hand lands on his shoulder.

Charles's painstaking focus shifts and he twists his neck to look at Erik, at the sun disk rising above the horizon.

“I lost track of time again,” Charles smiles sheepishly as he gets back to his feet.

Erik wordlessly drags him closer and they kiss. After Erik breaks the kiss, he looks him in the eye.

“You taste like ale,” he holds Charles’s shoulders in his grip and Charles schools his face.

He meets his Master’s gaze with an open, innocent look of his own.

“I visited the camp to make sure that they are fine and they have been having a round,” he grins for good measure. “Or rounds. I thought it would be improper to refuse.”

“Hm. So, are they fine? Is she?”

“They are good. They have been mourning their fellow men,” Charles explains, noting a weird inflection in Erik’s tone. “I have just realized that we didn’t discuss this in advance. Am I allowed to go out on my own?”

Erik nods, though stiffly.

“You are going to explore this possibility, aren’t you?” he drawls.

He kisses him again before Charles can get out a reply. It seems, Erik doesn’t mind ale, after all.

Erik also doesn’t mind sucking him off right by the doors to Charles’s chamber.

Afterwards, he leads Charles to bed and they quickly undress each other. Charles is full of exuberance as he kisses Erik and discovers the lingering taste of Erik and himself. Each touch feels as good as ever. Maybe, even better.

“What would you like to do?” pants Charles, breaking the kiss.

He enjoys sitting in Erik’s lap, but he sees, well, feels, how hard Erik is and he is getting hard himself.

“I want your ass,” Erik gabs his buttocks to emphasize his words. “To be precise, your hole. It should respond especially good to coddling early in the morning, don’t you think?”

Erik brushes his entrance with a fingertip and Charles hopes, dreams of Erik doing that again. He receives plenty as Erik orders him on top: he aligns Charles’s ass right at his mouth and Charles opens his mouth for Erik’s cock.

In the aftermath, they are spooning in bed, as heat is evaporating and Charles’s skin is gradually growing cold. Erik shifts and rolls over. It feels as though to get up. Charles hears, without turning to him, that Erik reaches for something on the bedside. When he comes back, Charles feels a hand parting his cheeks and two slick fingers, which are nudging inside. Charles’s entrance opens up to fingers, wet and welcoming after Erik has indulged it so nicely.

And, they are spooning again, the only change being that Erik is fingering him slowly and leisurely. After a while, Charles presses his ass onto his fingers. He just can’t help it. But Erik immediately stills his fingers and hooks them just so Charles moans and whines in lovely frustration. The fingers are barely brushing his spot.

“Don’t get very excited. I’m only making sure your anus is ready for a plug,” Erik says. “Are you ready to try the bigger one today?”

“Of course,” Charles exhales.

Only, there is one thing… Well.

“I want to watch,” Charles says quickly.

“You want to watch me put a plug in your ass?” Erik demonstrates excellent hearing and Charles demonstrates that he can still flush quite a bit.

“Please,” Charles says.

“You don’t have to beg for that. Just lie on your back and hold yourself open for me,” Erik withdraws his fingers and pets Charles’s thigh, signaling for him to move.

Charles does as he is told and pulls his knees almost to his shoulders, holding his thighs spread with his hands. Then, Erik returns with a folded blanket, a vial and the plug. He pushes the folded blanket under Charles’s lower back, and, heavens, it’s unbelievable how much Charles can see. He is really folded in half. His face grows hotter as Erik pours the oil directly onto and into his hole, as Erik dips not two, but three fingers inside and when Erik finally bungs his pucker with the wider, bigger plug.

 

 

 


	14. Chapter 14

 

 

 

Erik pushes in the biggest plug and Charles’s carefully slicked and now more compliant hole opens up to be perforated by metal. Charles is almost sorry that he is stuck on hands and knees, while Erik is filling him up. He’d rather watch it again. Because taking this one feels like an achievement. He is panting when Erik pushes the widest part through his taut rim. He takes his time to rotate it. Sweet heaven! Despite slick, it still hurts a little. In a special, sweet way he desires it to hurt.

When Erik goes to wash his hands Charles carefully stretches on his font. He still jostles the plug a bit and then groans when it presses right there.

As Erik sits on the bed, Charles turns his head to him and sees that his Master is already dressed.

Erik always looks impeccable. Charles has constantly been wondering…

“Do you have invisible servants in here?” asks Charles. “My sheets are always fresh and clean and, well, we do a lot of stuff… They can’t be clean by all means. And I wanted to dust the bookcase once, but it is pristine. Just like everything. It’s lovely and very convenient, yet I can’t figure it out.”

Erik smirks, but not unkindly.

“Would you rather I answer this inane question or take you on a brief trip?”

“It is a difficult choice… But I haven’t tested all theories, so let it be the trip,” says Charles. “Where are we going?”

He sits up, forgetting about the intrusion inside and squeezes his eyes shut as the combined feeling of stretch and pressure shoots through him.

“You are acting as if you want to fuck again.”

“In that case, we’d never leave,” sighs Charles.

“Very good. We depart at noon. Be in the Hall in time,” with this Erik stands up and leaves.

Charles lies down again and moans in the pillow. The fuel feeding his obsession lingers, but he tries to steer his mind in the right direction. Despite the obvious.

When shadows shrink from the autumn sun, Charles is in the Hall.

Erik comes from the outside, letting in cold air.

Charles cautiously eyes the sword hanging by his side and thick leather armor visible through the folds of a cloak.

“I think that the question where we are going has suddenly become of utmost importance.”

“We are overseeing some negotiations in the East. Never hurts to be prepared,” quips Erik and Charles clenches his jaw and steps closer.

The seal brings them on top of the windy flat hill, overshadowing the canyon.

Charles looks up at red skies and, as something soft lands on his cheek, he realizes that those are dark ashes. Ashes are just falling from the sky, floating gently, like big snowflakes.

Charles gazes along the horizon. Here the hordes of demon worshippers are abusing formerly rich and prosperous land. Now, it’s the region of an endlessly smoldering war. As far as his eyes can see, there is red land and red skies.

“They are on their way. Whatever happens, you stay right here and observe,” Erik casts a spell that feels like someone poured warm water all over him and, once Charles blinks, Erik is gone.

Charles grabs what seems like air, but feels like Erik’s elbow.

“Don’t wave your arms or they would notice. It’s very short-ranged,” Erik unclasps Charles’s hand. “Be still.”

Wind is tearing at Charles’s cloak, so his biggest concern is to stay warm and calm, because his heart is hammering like mad. He didn’t expect to be brought here.

Below, he sees two groups approaching each other.

The knight, leading the first group has got a royal crest on his or her sagum. The sagum looks burned and torn in places. The squad, led by the knight, looks worse for wear. But once Charles sees another group, his heart misses a beat. Demon worshippers are said to be breeding hybrids for war. He sees the leader with red skin and gangly muscular arms reaching the ground. Behind him, there are two tall creatures with horribly long necks. He doesn’t know where to look next, because they appear too grotesque. And he doesn’t even look up close.

What he sees next makes him sick.

Demon Worshippers brought heads. Human heads, which they threw on the ground, as though it is trash. Charles gags and covers his mouth with his hand.

But humans below don’t react like he does.

They throw a bag on the ground and the red-skinned gangly leader opens it.

He and the knight exchange some words and both groups just go back. Charles can’t believe what he just saw.

“Charles, how much can you see?” comes Erik’s voice. “Tell me what is in that bag?”

“I can’t see… Oh, you mean,” Erik has never addressed it before, but as Charles focuses and warped power lines come into view, so does the golden glow from the bag. He immediately reports back to Erik.

“Go back,” tells him Erik. “It’s dangerous to test your endurance right here. To intercept your obligatory questions, yes, I’m staying. I need to retrieve something.”

Charles scowls, glad that Erik can’t see his face. He can guess that the retrieval is going to be bloody, but he doesn’t need to be spared and coddled. Some of the Guardian’s duties might seem a bit unbecoming, but, well he can handle it.

“Charles,” there is a warning in Erik’s voice.

“I’m sorry, Master,” Charles steps back and the flash of blue brings his confused self back in the Hall.

 

***

 

 

In the aftermath, Charles keeps his hands wound round Erik’s neck, as he keeps panting from an intense release. Erik presses a kiss to his forehead and that makes Charles open his eyes. The emotions are rushing through him and he barely manages to hold in words, which might be off the mark.

“I want to do it,” says Charles instead and Erik understands.

He carefully pulls the plug out of Charles and tells him to turn on his side.

They are spooning, because Erik claims that this is the best way to be penetrated for the first time. It seems comfortable in theory.

On the first push, Erik’s cock glides up his ass crack, missing his entrance. Maybe because the area around his anus is so slick, that Charles feels oil everywhere on his rear.

“Move your upper knee to the side and thrust your ass backwards,” tells him Erik, “roll your hips… Good, you’re exposed to me better now.”

Erik then guides his cock in. It pops through a puffy, overstimulated rim with relentless force. Charles feels that the push is more powerful than ever before. It’s almost as if Erik aims to set in him for good. He pushes in past the resistance, drives his cock deeper as Charles’s inner walls tense up, aware of invasion.

“Don’t stop,” urges him Charles, breathing through the burn and impossible stretch. The preparation can only help that much.

Erik doesn’t. Not until his cock plugs in Charles’s hole firmly and confidently seals it up. The brush of coarse hair against his ass, the hot press of Erik’s tight balls against his sensitive skin, his Master’s hand clasped round Charles’s cock… It feels surreal. 

Charles still can’t believe he is able to contain Erik’s massive prick, take it to the hilt.

Despite Erik’s hand caressing his cock, Charles’s anus throbs and aches around hot intrusion. He thinks, he will never truly get over initial pain and discomfort. Inconveniences of a real world come before pleasure. Maybe, he was made that way, able to attain bliss only through pain. His asshole feels as if it’s set afire. A rivulet of sweat is trailing down the dip in his back. Charles shudders as the feeling prompts him to clench around Erik’s member. He groans and Erik does so too.

“Charles, does it hurt you when I push so deep?” when Erik speaks, his hot breath licks Charles’s neck.

It hurts, it feels good, it feels wrong, it feels right.

“Oh, my dear Master…,” Charles huffs, breathing shallowly. “I had the urge to experience it since, ah, please, don’t move. Not yet. I want it. I need you in me. Just let me… a moment.”

A moment passes and Charles dares moving his hips. He starts by tiny pushing forward and back motions, sliding from Erik’s cock a fraction and then pushing back. Noticing his response, Erik picks up his own rhythm and their thrusts synchronize.

Every time Erik’s cock drives deep into his ass, it leaves nothing unclaimed. Charles closes his eyes to concentrate on that good, wicked pleasure of being taken from behind for real. It’s too much and they both don’t last long. This time, when Erik spills his semen in Charles’s channel, Charles comes just from feeling that hot flood inside. Such intense pleasure from being the recipient of come makes him moan aloud and flush even more than he thought possible.

Erik strokes Charles some more, until Charles utters a moan of complaint.

“I think, you should be the one to move off me,” offers Erik calmly. “Your pace is preferable.”

“Agreed,” murmurs Charles.

As Charles shifts, Erik’s cock slides out of him and so does all the juicy spunk. Seed, dribbling out of his well-traveled hole is… sublime.It’s nothing compared to the rich flow down his knees after demons had his orifice opened up and filled for hours. But, Charles finds himself enjoying it nonetheless. He’d like to keep Erik’s cock and come inside longer, though. He can always plug it all in, but it’s not the same. Maybe, he will ask Erik to stay like that one night. What it would feel like to stay connected?...

He hisses and his hole contracts, startled a bit, when Erik’s fingers come into contact with his sore and wet entrance.

“I tore you a little,” says Erik. “Just a moment.”

Attuned to Erik’s energy, Charles senses when Erik uses magic to heal and soothe him. Charles thanks him quietly, suddenly overcome with weird bout of shyness.

After Erik leaves, Charles drops into a deep, sated sleep. As always, fucked into peaceful slumber.  


 

 

 


	15. Chapter 15

 

 

 

 

It is snowing outside.

Charles steps out only to discover that everything is covered in a thick and fluffy white carpet. As he has an important exercise in mind, he pulls up the hood and leaves the Tower’s perimeter. Out of the arch. Wards tingle as he comes through.

When Charles is outside the reach of the wards, he stops and focuses. He is facing the Tower from the west, so he draws a quick configuration in his head and teleports to the eastern side. That’s one. He immediately teleports back. Two. He starts feeling faint after the fourth. So, that’s how much mana he can spare on teleporting. He could probably try the fifth jump, but can already say that his energy is spread thin. It’s fine. He is becoming stronger. He has mastered the spell of the highest order and perfected his control in record time. He wouldn’t be able to do even that if he stayed in the Academy.

Charles takes in a deep breath and holds out a hand. Snow, already fallen on the ground, swirls up under his command. His affinity with water has always been strong. He stretches his awareness farther, but keeps it contained around himself and the snow is swept from the ground in a wave. It forms a snow vortex round him and Charles gives in to temptation and makes it swirl faster. He has both hands lifted now and he smiles, rejoiced.

When back in the Ground Hall, exhaustion is kicking in. As it often happens when he is tired and his focus is slipping, his vision shifts back and forth. Blue power lines are especially coiled and bright on the seal imbedded in the floor. The one Charles can’t comprehend, because the sequence of weird symbols is bizarre and feels wrong. And Erik doesn’t talk about it.

_Don’t you forget, young mage._

Charles stills, as a rush of fear paralyses him on the spot. He hadn’t heard that particular voice for a while. He frantically turns around, but there is nothing, no one.

_The mark of En Nur is carved on your soul. You cannot defy me._

“Well, thank you for finally introducing yourself,” quips Charles, though his insides twist in a tight knot. “Now, be gone from my head.”

He touches his temples with icy fingers and draws his shields up. His heart beats like mad, because he is not sure how it’s supposed to work on High Demon. But once he discovered the technique in the Library he had been practicing a little every day.

Nothing. He hears nothing.

Charles lets his hands fall. Why now? Because his Master is away? No, he is often gone during daytime since winter started. Charles only sees him in his chambers early in the morning as Erik wakes him up to fuck or after sunset.

Then, Charles contemplates the odd, grand seal beneath his feet.

Probably, he is looking at the answer.

 

 

***

 

  
  
“You are tense tonight,” states Erik.

And because he is saying it when he is half-way inside Charles, who is grinding his ass onto the prick, splitting him open, it sounds peculiar.

“Am I?” gasps Charles.

“Yes,” Erik parts his legs more, while thrusting deeper inside in tiny jerky motions. His grip pushes Charles’s knees up, so that they touch the pillow Charles’s head is resting on. That stretch combined with the stretch of his tender hole round that massive erect cock draw a pitiful whine from Charles.

“Great,” Erik huffs smugly. “More and more flexible day by day… you are.”

Charles twitches in his grip and his heated channel grips Erik’s cock in turn. He clenches tight. So tight, that he himself groans from mixed pleasure-pain and Erik curses for the first time since Charles has known him.

After the clenching, instead of settling himself inside and pounding Charles deep and slow, Erik pounds his hole fast and hard. He is almost growling as he is taking Charles like a beast in heat. Charles is thrashing on his cock and even crying a bit, as he gets drilled like there is no tomorrow.

When Erik stills on top of him and fills him up with a hot rush of his seed, Charles sobs. It’s too intense. Painful. Blissful. He feels like he is going to explode.

Just as Erik’s spent cock slips out, fingers slide in his gaping opening with a wet squelch.

Charles struggles faintly, as tears pool in his eyes.

“Please, stop,” he begs with raspy voice. “Please… give me –“

But Erik hooks his fingers and presses them to that spot and Charles never finishes that sentence. He sees white for a moment. Everything swirls in front of his eyes.

After he catches his breath, he staggers to the bathroom to relieve himself of Erik’s come and to wash up. He doesn’t expect to come back and find Erik sitting on bed.

“I was too rough,” Erik tells him and watches every clumsy step Charles takes with narrowed eyes.

Charles has no desire to object.

“This was like our first time. Not roughness, but… rather, in terms of intensity,” Charles gingerly sits on the bed next to him. He huffs, “Heavens. This is just so weird. We are not lovers by choice, yet I can’t help but think what if... Maybe, in next life…”

He stops talking, because he is walking down a tricky path.

“You should be glad that you’re alive. That you are leaving your dream,” Erik says in a low voice. “You have paid the price for all this.”

“You are right,” says Charles, because what else can he say. “I told you before, but I feel like I need to repeat myself. Thank you for taking me in. I can’t emphasize enough how grateful I am.”

He turns to look at Erik. He wants to touch him so badly, that he hurts inside. This is something Charles is always eager to share. Touch. Comfort and sensual contact.

Erik also looks at him attentively.

“Look how you have grown up. You aren’t crying and blushing anymore. You are able to look me in the eye and tell me what you think. You can even look me in the eye and lie.”

Charles continues holding Erik’s steady gaze. Panic is there, but it is subdued.

“You are keeping your secrets. Secrets, which concern me, are connected with me. I,” Charles stills and falls silent when Erik touches his cheek.

“I was right. You have been tense tonight. It’s inside you. Your very soul is troubled. But you aren’t going to tell me what brought this on.”

Can the Great Warlock see right through him? It should be impossible.

Erik traces his cheekbone with his fingertips as if he is a blind man and he has to map Charles’s face to recognize him. Bit by bit, Charles allows his expression to relax.

After Erik leaves shortly afterwards, Charles draws covers over himself and stares at the ceiling. For the first time since he has begun living in the Tower sleep doesn’t come easily.

  
  
***

 

  
  
Charles patiently stocks piles upon piles of books on his table. Ancient and recent chronicles of wars, scrolls, containing myths and legends in dead languages. Some of them are absolutely exciting and he mentally adds them to his ever increasing reading list. Some are hardly page-turners. He has trouble skimming through incomprehensible, badly translated lines.

A week passes by. Or whatever seems like week for him. But, there is no mentioning of a demon called En Nur. He actually discovers an interesting passage about the Tower. An unknown author warned that the Tower, built on the ruins of one of the portals, which used to connect a great number of realms, is unstable. Charles’s eyes focus on the word “portal” and he writes it down.

Erik interrupts Charles’s search when he suddenly announces, one sunny morning, that he wants to practice spellwork together.

They do it in the Ground Hall.

“You have to attack me. Anything you can think of. Combine, improvise. Show me what you can do.”

While Charles is looking around in doubts, Erik reassures him.

“The Tower can’t be damaged by magic of your level.”

Charles struggles not to sigh, as he is considering what to start with. Erik is ridiculously self-assured, but he has reasons to be.

The outcome is predictable.

Charles, panting and exhausted, feels that his hands are tingling from the aftershocks of channeling magic. Erik looks unruffled, as he dismisses Charles’s last attempt to graze him with a sneak attack.

“What do you do when your opponent outmatches you completely and threatens your life?” asks Erik.

“You might negotiate. Or try to outsmart such opponent,” Charles gasps and wipes his brow. “There is always a weakness, which can be explored.”

“Why don’t you consider running, Charles?” says Erik seriously and in a flash Charles feels a tight pressure on his throat that forces him on his toes.

The pressure is gone in a bit and Charles reels back, coughing. Good of Erik to remind him that he can kill Charles faster than Charles can even think of counterattack.

“I have a question,” collects himself Charles and then Erik nods he continues. “When I was attacked by the demon, which demolished windmills, I was… surprised that it didn’t hurt as much as I anticipated it to hurt. Also, one needs a lot of energy to teleport. But I could do it, though before coming here I thought this skill was not in the cards for me for a few years. Is our connection influencing me?”

“Yes and no. Your arrival was definitely no accident,” Erik then gives him a look, which Charles already knows. “I’d rather enjoy you in the bedroom. This exercise inspired me to think of all the ways I could fuck you right now… how well your flushed face will look when your tight hole is stuffed with cock.”

“Let’s go,” rasps Charles decidedly.   

 

 

 


	16. Chapter 16

 

 

 

That early morning Charles must have been in luck. His consciousness is returning in little bits as he finds himself asleep on his Master’s, Erik’s chest. And his cock must have slipped out of Charles during the night, because the last thing Charles remembers is clenching sweetly round Erik’s softening prick. A pity, Charles thinks with a smile. He would love to wake up already filled.

Bedcovers kept them both warm despite a dying red glow in the fireplace. Charles sighs and nuzzles his cheek against Erik’s skin. He feels an unmistakable touch. It is Erik, of course, pushing his nightshirt up to his waist. Charles’s eyes flutter open when Erik lays his hand on the back of Charles’s thigh. The spot where the skin of his inner thigh is always awfully sensitive.

Charles breathes in and out, in and out.

Soon, Erik’s grip on his flesh tightens and he hoists Charles’s thigh up. At that Charles can’t contain a hitch of breath. A dull soreness in the depth of his ass flares up, but he complies, closing his eyes shut and savoring the sinful jolt of pleasure. The skin of Erik’s palm is calloused just in the flawless way. It is pressing down on the crease under Charles’s ass cheek now.

Then, Erik spreads his fingers and suddenly his touch is a light caress. Tips of his fingers are only petting the bottom of Charles’s ass. Easy and gentle, like butterfly wings. Charles’s cock stirs and he moans. He wants those fingers on his prick and in his asshole. Preferably, both at the same time.

“Don’t move,” warns his Master roughly.

“I’ll try,” Charles whispers.

He relaxes his hold on the sheets in time as Erik grabs the handful of his ass, squeezing, and Charles moans.

“And don’t talk,” Erik resumes petting his ass lightly. “One might think you never shut up, you, the model of impudence and boast. Too clever for your age, though. Too bright. But scarcely enough to walk the world alone, so soft… This indeed is a perfect ass, you have here. Fresh and round. Soft too, yet pert to touch, so very white... An article of beauty, indeed.”

His Master’s strokes get slower, but more forceful. As if he intends to rub his words into Charles’s steadily heating skin.

“Your buttocks are pretty, but your hole is a pure delight. Letches on whatever one feeds it… Your hole is a corrupted one, which I approve. A very extraordinary little orifice… it spares no one, no demon, no man. Do you remember the first time you were penetrated by a demon?”

Charles’s bowels clench as well as his pucker. A memory of being impaled with a slimy, pulsing appendage fuels his arousal. His insides grow too hot, face probably flushed with a mix of desire and embarrassment. Charles has to breathe through his mouth now. His breaths come out wet. Erik’s heart is thumping hard beneath his ear.

“Either you pay attention to me or I shall exercise over you the rights conferred upon me as your Master.”

All of the sudden, Erik clasps his other thigh and shifts it up. Confused, Charles feels the brush of Erik’s fat cock against his belly. Erik wastes no time as he effectively spreads Charles’s legs on both sides of his own body. Pins his knees, pulling them wider apart still. It hurts just right, so Charles almost sobs because of the stretch and last night’s residual throbbing.

“The pleasure of spraying semen into you will be double: that of enjoying this lechery myself and that of giving you a new lesson. Hold still.”

His thighs start to burn, but he does as he is told. His forehead is damp with beads of sweat. The position keeps his back arched up, while exposing his hole at the same time.

“Let’s prepare this sweet ass of yours for the taking, all right?”

Charles groans in favour.

While fingers are rubbing slick into his tender pucker, dipping inside ever so slightly, Charles realizes that Erik is still holding his knees down.

“Erik,” he rasps abruptly.   
  
Fingers don’t stop. A single persistent digit burrows inside Charles’s ass and begins to move in and out, imitating what Erik’s cock will be doing pretty soon.

“It’s fine. No one is touching you in here but me. Concern yourself with fucking and forget the mechanisms of fucking.”

Charles lets his worries go and adopts the idea of being fingered by a phantom. Previously, he had no idea there was a magic for this. He strives to grasp the sense of it, rather distracted by four fingers rhythmically pushing in and out of his ass. He whimpers when phantom pulls out. His eyes water a little because of feeling raw and used. He is sure that his anus is gaping slightly. His hole is becoming his single fixed, throbbing focus.

When Erik pulls back the covers and orders him into a new position, Charles’s arms and legs shake too much to manage it at first. But as his Master is waiting, so patient, Charles carefully rolls over to the other side of the huge bed. He was slightly concerned that out of all bedroom’s pleasures Erik would choose riding, so this one comes as a relief.

As Charles lowers himself on his stomach, making pained noises when his member is pressed into cold sheets, he puts his weight onto forearms. He bends his right leg to the side, testing for a comfortable spot and then stretches the other leg behind him. That way Erik will be slightly on top of him, but not too much.

Erik moves behind him. He leans over Charles, but doesn’t touch him as he’s only holding himself up on his taught arms. The only point of contact between them right now is his Master’s thick and intimidating cock, pressing into Charles’s ass.

Erik enters him in short, sure thrusts, which leave Charles whimpering and gasping, while baring for him. It needs to be said, that it took Charles a while to get used to taking in Erik’s entire length. Even now he struggles with it. When Erik finally settles inside him, pressing Charles’s pelvis hard into the bed, Charles understands what is so special about this position.

His Master is deep, very deep in him indeed.

“Soon, Charles. Soon you’ll come and I’ll take such pleasure in you… clenching and pulsating around my cock. Now, take deep breaths… Tight as always. You’re simply splendid,” Erik also has trouble breathing at this point.

Charles breathes in steady and full breaths, while his body readjusts to welcoming a penetration.

And then, the fucking commences. Erik no longer restrains himself. He initiates a quick cadence of rise and fall, push and pull. Charles’s arms almost crumble beneath him. He hangs his head. The sounds that leave his mouth are obscene.

He comes like Erik predicted: with his member squeezed beneath his body and his asshole ridden hard and fast. Like promised, Erik fucks him through it and then comes himself. Then, his Master takes special care not to fall right onto Charles. How he’s always able to hold himself up, Charles has no idea.

Instead, while Charles is swooning face down on the bed, Erik props himself with one hand and pulls out. The squirt of seed, flowing out of his hole after Erik’s departure, has always been a very powerful sensation.

Charles stopped protesting some time ago, so when Erik pries his ass cheeks open, Charles attempts to help him by spreading his legs.

“How do you feel?” asks Erik, tracing the rim of Charles’s slightly puffy hole with his finger.

Some ejaculate is still dripping from it – Charles can feel it. Erik is just making sure he didn’t hurt him. His touch is cool and is banishing soreness.

As for Charles, his world is still spinning while he is trying to say something.

“I don’t have words,” slurs Charles, barely above harsh whisper. “You’re superb… When I asked you to stay the night, I didn’t think –“

“It’s necessary,” cuts him off Erik and gets up from bed. “Also, those sacrilegious fantasies we can indulge in are certainly far from disappointing. It would be evil to let the demons have you instead.”

Charles can’t agree more.

 

 

 

 

 


	17. Chapter 17

 

 

 

Erik he has just stridden in, bent Charles over a library table and bared his ass, parting his cheeks.

Charles doesn’t have any words in him. He is mildly astounded, though, and happy expectation fills his cock.

He was slightly worried when Erik didn’t visit at dawn.

As he reaches to grab the opposite edge of the table, preparing himself for a round of rough fucking, Erik pulls a plug out. Not the biggest in collection. But Charles is glad he decided to wear it in the morning, as he woke up and discovered he missed the feeling of being filled. Though, he didn’t expect it to turn out like this.

When he feels Erik’s fingers probing the give of his hole, Charles grants Erik entrance by spreading his legs and derives great enjoyment from an instant Erik spares to pet his pucker with his thumbs gently.

“So clever of you to prepare yourself for me.”

When Erik pushes in, it feels analogous to being skewered with a club. And Charles senses the lack of their ordinary excessive slick in his pulsing passage all too sharply. The plug kept him ready, but… No foreplay for his butthole exterior or his cock, yet Charles is hardening more and more. It’s like a step above being fucked. It’s about Erik owning him this time.

“I might be leaving soon,” huffs Erik out of the blue, while planting his cock inside.

Charles only moans, loud and desperate, when Erik bottoms out, inflaming all right spots with his cock alone.

Erik fucks him like he’s in race, where his goal is a quick release.

Charles comes screaming and… opens his eyes to discover himself on the same table, his knees pushed up to his shoulders, his asshole still being pounded. He writhes and sobs, half-delirious. Erik continues to drive his cock in and out. Heaven, but it hurts, his senses are aflame and tears are rolling down Charles’s face. He is consumed by the ecstasy of hurt. His entire being is centered around giving Erik what he needs. And Erik needs to burn himself into his insides. Charles takes a clouded look at Erik’s face, while all sounds mysteriously disappear and he blacks out again, painfully stretched ass being pumped relentlessly. With no break in sight.

“…wake up, Charles,” Erik’s voice calls to him and Erik’s hand swipes wet fringe from his heated forehead.

Charles grunts something unhuman, while focusing on his Master and on his cock lodged in Charles’s entrance.

“I healed you and I oiled your passage very well,” tells him Erik as Charles tries to comprehend the reality of being fully naked in his bed. Instead of being screwed on the table.

Equally naked Erik is on top of him, in him. Charles’s pelvis is at an upward angle as his legs rest in the crooks of Erik’s elbows. He is bent almost like he had been when he came to his senses on the table.

Charles feels stripped of skin when he senses how sweaty he is, how full, how foggy and heavy everything is.

Oh, Charles’s heartbeat accelerates when his mind recreates the picture of Erik taking him and spending in him while Charles’s body was limp and unresponsive, his hole probably loose from such extended handling. When Charles concentrates on the sensations inside and around his anus, strained around the familiar grand cock, there is no pain. That usual sweet hurt of stretch and give, the budding, ever pulsing pleasure…

“How long?...” croaks Charles when Erik hoists his legs higher, pushing deeper into him.

“Long enough that I thought I might have broken you,” Erik quips, easing himself out slowly and pushing in slowly too, as Charles groans and moans and whines a little. “Human body is inferior in many ways, but your orifice is still nicely snug and warm. Even after I’ve been doing you for hours. Very pleasant. Your body became very receptive of my cock. But, I had to clean your ass out of semen twice, for I couldn’t feel the cling of your inner walls properly. Too slippery… makes frictions dull.”

“Not… you are not human,” whimpers Charles pleadingly as Erik stops moving half-way inside his ass.

“What do you mean? I’m not. I told you before,” Erik points out seriously. “If there wasn’t anything demonic in me, I wouldn’t be able to satiate your lust. Do you feel hurt anywhere?”

Charles shakes his head weakly. He lacks energy for anything else. He silently thanks Erik for putting him back in his soft and comfortable bed.

“Good, wonderful… tired,” he murmurs and adds, “want more of you. Wait? Are you… leaving?”

His anxiety initiates some involuntary butthole clenching at which Erik groans approvingly as he starts moving again, ramming Charles’s behind. A question is firmly ignored, because Charles can’t but weep from sharp, spiraling pleasure.

“Clamping down on cock is one your virtues. You always time it magnificently,” praises him Erik. “Anyone who fucks you should know how lucky they are.”

When Charles comes, Erik pulls out, gets on his knees, still in between Charles’s spread legs, and after a few sharp tugs of his hand sprays Charles’s belly with seed.

Charles watches the display with heavy eyes. His entire body feels relaxed and sleepy.

“If you want to, go ahead,” he tells Erik, as his eyes are falling shut.

“I believe, I need to stop too,” Erik draws something with stickiness on his belly and Charles means to asks what is going on but instantly forgets, “you’re just irresistible… No wonder now why it was so mad.”

“So are you,” Charles smiles and shuts his eyes.

He didn’t specify what he meant, he thinks later. Both were fitting.

 

***

 

 

Charles crawls out of bed in the evening and goes to find some dinner. He is tired as usual, but he is sated and the voices in his head are profoundly silent.

On the way back he passes by Erik’s study and darts a wary look inside. Erik is holding something like a talisman. The room is lit by glowing spheres. The pentagram is drawn in the middle of the room and there, in the center, Charles sees a box. It is glowing too. Magic lines, which he sees, are swirling and pulsing in violent fashion.

“I’m sorry,” he says when Erik turns and measures him with a blank look. “I’ll leave.”

“Wait, Charles,” Erik sounds somewhat strained, while pouring magic into the lines.

“Yes?”

“There is an issue only I can deal with. Should I leave and not come back in a while, you’ll have to find someone else.”

“Oh,” as Erik’s implication sinks in, Charles falters.

“I trust you to take care of that as soon as you feel the need. The villagers are going to be distrustful, so I suggest you visit somewhere you won’t be easily recognized. Like Chester.”

“The capital? But,” there is a lot in his Master's words statement, that just screams wrong.

Be rational, reminds himself Charles. Magic is about putting reins on one’s will. Be reasonable about it.

“Treat it as an order. I’m sure you are able to find someone willing to fuck in under the time limit. Try not to be reckless in pursuing your desires, though. You are my apprentice, remember that.”

“I will be careful,” promises Charles firmly, though part of him can’t believe they are having this conversation. “Will I see you tonight in my chamber?”

He can’t keep hope from leaking into his voice.

Erik frowns at him and turns to the pentagram, so Charles realizes that his audience is over.

As he is climbing up the stairs he feels a knot in his gut. Hot and tight.

He looks at his reflection in the mirror with a critical eye. Charles meets his own eyes and grows calmer. His Master has literally fucked his doubts out of him. He is bedding one of the most powerful and attractive men in the realm. He is becoming stronger as a mage. He has survived the Tower. Tension easies out of his shoulders and Charles smiles a small smile. The pale, bright-eyed lad in the mirror beams back.

 

 

 


	18. Chapter 18

 

 

 

 

Charles remembers having that conversation as though it was yesterday. Well, it’s tough to tell, not in the Tower, but it was this winter. He is sure, because the fireplace was gleaming and he was wearing a nightshirt to bed.

Erik came in late in the evening when Charles was reading in bed. That’s because Charles thought that Erik would skip their daily activities, as it happened when he was busy with Guardian business. And that’s why, Charles was getting ready to spend an evening with a book on necromancy. Quiet and devoid of any carnal endeavors.

“There was a breach in the mountains,” said Erik, and he sounded the closest to exhausted Charles had recently heard him to be. Even his dark aura was subdued.

Charles put the tassel in between the pages and laid the book on the bedside stand, tucked it in under the identical grimoires.

“I was worried when I couldn’t find you earlier. By the way, we never measured how much I can withstand without an intercourse,” suddenly realized Charles and his voice failed him at the end of the sentence.

“I think, you have adapted enough. You should survive for some time. If you crave it too much and I am not around, you need to seek for any partner elsewhere. There will be times when I’ll have to leave for a while. I trust you to be reasonable about this. You know what’s on the line.”

Charles looked Erik in the eye, but hesitated to nod then. Though Erik was essentially right.

“I can help you relax,” Charles threw back the covers and kneeled on the bed. “Please, tell me what you need.”

Erik was now watching him with a troubling, smug expression and a recognizable dark glimmer in his eyes.

“Whatever you do tonight, leave this nightshirt on. It’s quite a sight on you.”

“Yes, Master,” Charles cleared his throat, feeling a familiar tightening in his lower belly.

“Oil and stretch yourself, I’ll join you in a few minutes,” he said and Charles’s blood rushed south.

Erik just turned to suit to warm a bath.

Through the gap left by open tapestry Charles saw Erik quickly getting undressed. He sighed, partially frustrated. He wanted to join Erik in the bath if that was possible, but he was also excited for what was to come.

The vial on his nightstand was almost empty. Erik used a lot on him last night. So Charles padded to the chest by the window and pulled out a new vial. He was pondering how to proceed with lubricating, since Erik wanted him to remain clothed. The nightshirt was almost reaching his knees. It was soft and it touched his skin so nicely. He’d hate to dirty it that much.

Well, first he kneeled on the bed with one leg and pushed the shirt all the way to the dip in his back. This way he could reach his entrance easier. He felt both awkward and eager at the same time.

Charles dipped two fingers into the oil and reached behind. As he began coaxing his pucker into opening up he heard the splash of water. He slowly drove one finger inside, taking notice of the fluttering of his inner walls, how quickly his channel was now opening up. He also noted that the feeling, though nice, was nothing in comparison to Erik’s hands playing with his ass. Time and again, he was reminded that he didn’t control it. He couldn’t manage his body or his pleasure.

“Are you stretched well enough?”

Pressing his feelings down, Charles sighed again and sat back on the bed.

“I’m sorry, it feels wrong,” he dared tell.

“Explain.”

Erik was standing by his side of the bed, already gloriously naked. Already half-hard.

Charles, clutching the hems of his stupid nightshirt, told him.

Erik laid down on the bed, stretching his body with evident relief and at first he didn’t say a word. Charles took that as a sign of him thinking. He was right.

“You need my input,” Erik folded his arms behind his head and looked at Charles sideways. “I think, Charles, that today you have to work for it. Follow my instructions as I guide you. Understand?”

“Yes,” a prick of arousal came back and Charles’s frustration evaporated.

“Now, hands and knees. Good. Crawl here, right between my legs. That’s right. Turn around and hitch up your shirt. Yes, just like that. Let me see your pretty ass.”

Charles spread his knees like ordered and lowered his chest down. Erik could see everything now. Following his Master’s command Charles stretched and slicked up his hole with slow, gentle motions. Next, Erik made him put three fingers in there. One by one. And hold them inside until Erik took pity and told him to turn round.

Then, he climbed onto Erik’s lap. He was panting, his nightshirt clinging to his sweaty back. Erik didn’t move an inch while Charles was guiding his slicked cock inside. Which he finally did and with each motion he felt the burn in his thighs, heated frictions of cock in his channel grow in intensity. Charles didn’t last that time. He came before Erik did. He was shaking from his release and couldn’t bring himself to move, so Erik flipped them, pressing Charles’s back into the bed, and, after a rapid sequence of thrusts, he dumped Charles’s ass full of hot spunk. And then Erik proceeded fucking him throughout the night. When he was taking Charles from behind, he pushed two fingers inside, next to his cock and Charles screamed himself hoarse. He was still feeling it next morning.

He recalls it now as though a fog was cast over his memories.

He really can’t do it without someone else. It’s simply impossible.

But he chose to ignore his condition, because he’s a stubborn child Erik considers him to be.

Three days ago Erik has left the Tower.

To say that Charles was badly affected would be an understatement.

Berating himself for dragging out the inevitable for so long, Charles puts on a cloak with unsteady hands and makes sure that the hood is covering his eyes.

The teleportation seal brings him to the secluded part of the western temple. He sneaks past gaping onlookers wandering across the yard with magical fountains, feeling himself stretched thin and hollow.

Comparing to the Tower, the city smells weird and strong. And not always nice. 

He crosses the market place awashed in chatter and clutter of bargaining folk. Long ago, when he was fresh to the city and Academia he heard rumors about that place. The one offering unprecedented delights. Tales passed in whispers. There are taunting voices in his head. The volume grows like a wave incoming upon the shore. Charles feels faint. He glances up at some random tavern he is passing by and something drives his feet inside, into warm and befuddled belly of an old and rusty place.

People inside it don’t pay any attention to his persona, so he relaxes a little.

A petite girl with a sly grin is coming up to him. She’s got a patched towel over her arm, an empty tray pressed under her armpit and the sort of brash attitude that speaks of survival skills.

 _She will taste like sun-flowered liquor_   — thinks Charles and she suddenly stops and her face goes lax. And then, as though intoxicated, she gives Charles a wide-eyed, desperate look. In the dim light Charles sees his hunger reflected at him.

He finds himself pressing her to the backdoor, the smell of fish and herbs particularly strong in the dark pantry. But then, the pantry is not that dark because Charles can see her lust, her vital energy pulsing in her aura as she unfastens his pants. His lips find that spot on her neck, which he _knows_ she likes and he hoists her up and holds her tight like she _dreamt_ to be held.

Charles truly comes to his senses only when she sags in his hold and it takes him a long moment to comprehend what is going on and where he is.

He feels elated, as though he is floating. Tasting the whirlpool of strong and violent energy makes him drunk, but a prudent part of Charles is shouting at him through his fervent joy. He sees, once again, the energy lines everywhere, he sees the girl’s fading aura and it adds up. He also hears angry voices and banging on the door, so he quickly puts a healing seal on the girl and concentrates on weaving teleportation runes.

His hands tremble a little when he pulls at the lines, but not from fatigue. He consumed so much and so fast that all his being is reeling. Now he needs to get away from her as soon as possible, because that beast in him is always, always starved.

Later in the evening, sitting among piles of books and scrolls, Charles is cradling his head in his hands. Too overwhelmed to react in any other way. He has no idea why he seems to be sharing the very trait of the soul eating beasts that drove him into this madness.

The only thing he knows for sure — his Master knew all this time.

He must have.

 

 

 

 


	19. Chapter 19

 

 

 

 

Charles learns from his mistakes.

That’s why next afternoon he is up and prepared for another trip.

The weather in the city is nasty today. Cobblestone streets are covered with mud and puddles. The capital is on the southern edge of the continent. Snow must be a great novelty here. In winter all you get is cold rain and stormy winds from the gulf. However, the spring is treading closer here too, soon it will bring forth blossom and greenery. He forces himself into thinking random thoughts, about weather or scenery, as he strides to the tavern from yesterday and pulls at the massive door.

It won’t budge.

Charles tries knocking, but only earns dull pain in his knuckles.

He is toying with a few magically induced ways to enter the tavern when the window above his head is opened.

Charles raises his head and is immediately treated to a nice sight of a sleepy girl with messy black hair, frowning at him from above.

“Hey, you,” she says in a rough voice. “Did you forget? Only even days.”

“I’m sorry,” Charles smiles a large, relieved smile, because she looks alright, if a tad too pale.

“Oh,” her dark eyes meet his and she smiles too, now playfully. “Have I seen you before, stranger?”

“No,” Charles denies, sighing inside, and waves a quick goodbye.

“Come again,” she grins and after Charles turns to go, her smile is still swimming in front of his eyes.

The relief he feels is very strong. At least, she is alive. At least, he stopped in time. And still, Charles shakes his head, thinking of how much energy she’s harboring. Perhaps, she is one of those particularly blessed with abundant life force. He was lucky that she is. So lucky. Erik never seems that depleted after the intercourse. Charles used to think it was only his predisposition: to nod off right afterwards or simply black out from release. Not that he is complaining, because it feels fantastic. But he has been paying attention and at times it just felt wrong. As though Erik was doing something to him other than just fucking.

He hears it when he is passing a busy square.

“Behold, the Necromancer is back, tis our souls he is after,” a thin red-headed boy, standing on the barrel, is waving his arms.

He has attracted quite a crowd, so Charles pulls his hood lower and joins them, recalling warning signs he detected during the attack on the windmills.

The boy has a naturally loud, piercing voice, which both irritates and grabs one’s attention.

“Another village was attacked in the Grand Valley and the corpses have risen,” he shakes his head with aplomb and wails. “For thy lord we must die? Ask them,” he points a finger to the right and Charles briefly glances there and sees an arch leading to the upper city. On top of it, there are seven knights and the current king on the rearing horse carved in stone.

“Where is the Guardian?” screams someone from the crowd.

Where, indeed, asks himself Charles and because he is looking around, he is the first to see city guards rounding the corner, accompanied by a strikingly beautiful lady in a pristine white coat. Her platinum band shines regally. She is the youngest mage from the magistrate, rumours say that she might inherit the Tower one day. Emma Frost was present on the assembly the day he was banished and banned from ever studying magic. Charles feels both hot and cold as he sees her perfect self and when she raises her hand with a blooming seal to strike the red-headed screamer, Charles acts without a second thought.

He screams “run” to the boy and the spell meant to freeze him on the spot meets Charles’s counterspell halfway.

Humidity, rain means it’s easy to call upon water, he thinks quickly, and an entire square gets covered in thick mist. He uses the panic to run to the narrow side street and nearly succeeds before a blast of magically summoned wind clears the area. With hammering heart, Charles joins the running, taking off his cloak on the way and shedding it in a nearby open cart. Then, he spots a narrow lane between stone houses, and hurries there. He can’t configure a teleportation seal on the move. Well, no one can. He is not sure whether Erik might, though.

The lane smells of something stale and wet.

Charles puts one hand on the wall to steady himself, while he’s fighting for calm and proper focus.

“There you are,” he hears behind his back and his heart first jumps and then plummets down.

White Witch herself is approaching him with an icy sphere above her outstretched arm and a smirk on her fair face. Her magic aura is blindingly white like her attire.

Charles only has time to spare a lament “Erik will be disappointed”, before he finds himself facing down one of the most notorious mages in the realm.

As she tilts her blond head to the side, rising one eyebrow, something _shifts_ in the air between them. Something frighteningly familiar. Charles recognizes that brand of lust, that nectar awaiting. Her wide blue eyes with dilated pupils and slightly parted rosy lips turn her expression from viciously cold into viciously intoxicated. Her spell dissolves and as she presses Charles against the wall their kiss burns like fire.

Befuddled, Charles struggles to maintain a presence of mind and partially succeeds. He had his fill yesterday, but the beast is awake again. And heavens above, but she is an amazing kisser, so impossible to let go that he finds his hands sliding up the curve of her arched back, holding her tight and close.

Charles, who only ever kissed Erik, discovers that where Erik is straightforward and steady, she is demanding and fluid, like liquid steel encased in lace. Her energy feels so strong and tastes so good. Somehow, when they lean apart a little, she clasps her free hand round the magic lines that simply pulse in his eyes.

Charles just covers her mouth with his again. Her teleportation seal blooms and dies out in a bit, taking them far and away.

 

 

***

 

  
  
The sheets beneath his back are soft like flower petals. It occurs they can’t quite break apart even now, kissing fervently as though this is the last kiss in the world and they are running out of time. This powerful woman is eager for his undivided attention. She is wishing for a skilled lover who would obey her every whim. Charles does and it pleases her immensely.

He rolls them over and his lips finally slide from her delectable mouth to her no less delectable neck. In the midst of their tumbling into bedroom she lost her clothes as well as Charles his.

Planting kisses, which go lower and lower, Charles strokes her smooth belly, while he presses a light teasing kiss in between the breasts. He savors each sensation, listening to her moans and sighs of pleasure. She is in the mood for gentle today and her body responds beautifully to each touch. Her pleasure is thick like honey, sweet flavor of which is offset by cool undertones.

He senses something else, like a tide rising. She grabs handful of his hair and forces his head up. Her eyes are shining with it.

“Show me what else you can do with your tongue, sweetie,” she murmurs, enjoying the sight of him between her long legs and, of course, he understands her immediately being the one to share her state of mind at the moment.

He settles on his stomach as her fantasy unfolds. He works her towards release with his tongue and mouth only, aware of her preferences. When right time comes Charles complements his strokes with letting go of his restrained urge to drink her energy up.

After quickly collecting his clothes he stops by the bed with a slight feeling of shame. She shouldn’t remember him. That girl from yesterday didn’t. But someone that powerful? What if she does?

Feeling guilty by the minute, he tucks her in, pulling the bedcovers up.

 

 

***

 

 

  
  
The house by the lake looks as quiet as it did yesterday, when he and Emma Frost came crashing through the doors and pulling each other’s clothes off.   

Charles squints at the magic lines twisted asymmetrically. Wards, he thinks and patiently waits until the enchantress reacts. In a few heartbeats until her arrival he contemplates a sarcastic voice in his head asking him whether a morning after visit to last night’s partner will be now a constant.

When she appears in front of him, stepping out of the seal in her white glory, Charles adopts a charming, innocent smile, which often makes Erik dismiss his inadvertent rule-breaking. It backfires at times, however, but this is a story for a different occasion.

If she doesn’t recall him, he will simply pretend to be a lost traveler, hence a sack and a rough grey cloak.

“You know when to show up,” she leers.

She is clad in a simple dressing gown and her hair is loose, but even like that she is striking.

And, the main point is — she remembers him.

“I thought I would check whether you’re fine, my lady,” Charles decides that a bow wouldn’t hurt.

She shakes her head slowly, watching Charles with an enigmatic smile.

“Something strange happened yesterday, my darling. I scarcely remember whether anyone ever made me feel like that, made my mind so clouded… that all I can remember is your sweet face and those eyes,” she steps closer to Charles.

Charles senses her magic forcing itself into his aura, but he came prepared.

“I swear, I didn’t —“

She puts a finger to his lips.

“Keep your excuses down, sweetie. I think you owe me one. And I think you know what payment I prefer.”

 

 

 

 

 

 


	20. Chapter 20

 

 

 

And so he finds himself in Emma Frost’s bed again. After he returns the favor, she praises him by patting his cheek and tells him to lie down.

As of now, while her skilled mouth is on his cock and her gentle fingers are comfortably massaging his ass from within, his head hits the pillow and he moans. He knows that his face is heating up very fast and he is on the edge of release, because you can’t deny it: she has the technique. When she does something wicked with her tongue and her long fingers scissor in his depth, rubbing his constricting walls and stroking his spot, Charles’s heart seizes as well as his insides. He comes so hard that he sees white.

“So I was right. You like this kind of fun. And you are used to that — you open up rather nicely, darling. Who is that lucky man who gets to bed you?”

Charles instantly shakes his head, slow to gather together a decent reply.

“I remember, sweetheart. Anonymity is something I can understand. Besides, I don’t need your life story in bed. Only your body, namely your mouth, nothing else.”

She stretches on top of him, so that her face is barely inches apart from his.

Charles forces his need to devour her down with a tremendous effort. Yet, even with demonic presence subdued, being with her feels absolutely great.

“But let me tell you that I think I recall these eyes of yours. So pretty and bright,” she murmurs with a sly smile.

Charles kisses her on the mouth until he feels that his time is almost up.

“I really have to go. I’m sorry,” he says and Emma shrugs dismissively.

“I’ll see you tomorrow. Same time,” she says and her tone implies that he has no choice but to obey.

She ruffles his hair when she leaves the bed and strides to the small door in the corner of her lush bedroom, naked and obviously entirely comfortable with it.

“I’m not watching you. In case you’d rather maintain your fashionable sneaking streak,” she says before disappearing behind the door.  


 

***  


 

 

Maybe it’s good that this is the same person, thinks Charles, while he is picking what to wear to his appointment with Emma. Not that it matters. His clothes will quickly end on the floor regardless.

Yet, he can’t help but dress with care. Having such fine clothes and so much of everything continues to be a novelty to him. Charles came to believe that Erik understood Charles’s fascination with something as mundane as an embroidered waist-coat. The starved man’s fascination with things he could only imagine having.

He arrives at the designated place and time and walks straight to the house. On the way there he notes a small commotion in the stables, so he quickens his steps and slides through the backdoor, which opens into a direct passageway to Emma’s room.

He hears voices coming through the bedroom door. One of the them belongs to a man.

Charles pauses a little, contemplating his next move, but Emma swings the door open and grins a mischievous grin.

“Come in, sweetheart. Sir knight won’t bite you. Unless you ask him nicely.”

In the chamber Charles sees a tall, muscular man with a patch covering his right eye, who is wearing nothing whatsoever and who is sitting on the edge of the bed, looking grim. His dark chestnut hair is cropped short, but evidently tousled up from lots of turning in bed. If Charles didn’t understand the meaning of awkward before, he would discover it now.

Emma tuts and frowns and the knight’s eyes dart to her.

“Relax,” she smirks to him and Charles reads unsaid “or else” as clearly as though she spelled it for them.

“Indulge me, boys,” Emma passes Charles and sits in the armchair by the window, making a show of crossing her legs.

Her white gown is indecently short and thin linen is almost transparent.

When her words truly sink in, Charles gulps down. She wants them to give her a show? This unfamiliar man and he?

“Sweetheart, I don’t know who you are, but I know what you can do,” she addresses Charles. “Summers,” she speaks to the knight, “your apprehensions are without ground. Had I ever made you experience anything but bliss? Please, tell me I’m not a bad teacher. Although, knowing your inability to loosen up, I am not surprised, yet I am disappointed.”

“What else do you want from me?” groans the knight roughly and Charles, sort of, feels sorry for him.

“Can I kiss you?” he asks and the man stares at him and then past his shoulder at Emma.

Then, he nods and pinches the bridge of his nose.

“I wonder, what does she have on you, lad? Did you cut her rune theory lecture or something?”

Charles feels uneasy how close he is to the truth. Though, they say that Frost is overseeing only undergraduates, because she is otherwise busy. Charles never made it that far.

To tuck away his wayward feelings, Charles takes a step to bed as Emma’s eyes are burning a hole in his back.

“She is not forcing you? Are you alright?” asks him the man when Charles places his hands on those broad shoulders and leans in to brush their lips.

“Everything’s fine,” he breathes and loosens a grip on the overpowering lust, roaring within him.

He catalogues the alterations in the man’s breathing, sees how his visible eye darkens and when he grabs Charles in his arms and pulls him down into his lap Charles follows. Knight’s hands slide from his back to his buttocks and he starts kneading Charles’s ass. His kisses Charles aggressively, pulling at his bottom lip and smashing their open mouths together.

“Told you so,” comes Emma’s smug voice. “Now, sweetheart, please, bare yourself to us. My eyes have been missing the sight of your fair skin. You, let him go now.”

Despite being under the pull, the knight obeys and even helps Charles to his feet. Emma must have quite an influence, marvels Charles.

Kissing made him hot and flustered, so he undresses quickly. The knight is sitting back on the bed, stroking his thick erection to full hardness.

“Down on your hands and knees, sweetheart,” urges him Emma. “Yes, good boy.”

“Summers, do you see that vial on the night-stand? Use it to slick and loosen our precious boy’s ass. Go slow. I want to enjoy the view while it lasts.”

When the knight grabs his thighs and pushes them further apart, Charles has to bend his back. He squirms a little when rough, calloused thumbs run along thin skin of his perineum. Charles’s balls tighten up in anticipation.

He spills oil on Charles’s ass crack and swipes the edge of his entire palm up and when down the crack, efficiently warming up Charles where it matters. His ass already feels hot and tiny beads of sweat collect in the dip of his back and his forehead when the knight starts stroking his pucker with light circles. After the strokes, he proceeds entering Charles with a finger, which slides inside smoothly and the knight slaps his ass in reward.

Charles groans in approval.

“He is accustomed to it,” the knight throws to Emma and continues fucking Charles’s hole with two, then three and four fingers.

Charles’s hips buck when four fingers keep pistoning in him relentlessly, holding his release at bay.

“Please,” he begs, not just because he wants the prick in him, but also because he can’t allow himself to drag it out.

No matter how much he wants to.

“How do you want me to take him?” the knights addresses Emma again, still fingering helplessly moaning Charles.

“Let me think,” she drawls. “If you take him from behind, I won’t be seeing much. Sit up, then. You will hold him in your lap. Let him face me, by the way. I’d like to see a good bounce.”

So Charles is turned and while the knight is helping him sink down on his cock, he’s holding Emma’s glinting gaze. He doesn’t really know what to do with his hands. He can only think of grabbing the knight’s bulky arms, which are holding his knees widely spread and screwing him down on his hardness. When the cock is buried in him to the balls and Charles’s ass settles on strong thighs, he lets out a breath. The man is caressing his stomach and chest. He is not moving much, giving Charles time to adjust to being filled.

“How are you, lad?” he asks quietly.

“You can move,” exhales Charles, finally able to relax his anal muscles around the stranger’s cock.

It feels different inside. So unlike Erik’s.

It is still good, he decides. This feeling is very special. He doesn’t want it to end.

The knight controls the rhythm of their fucking and Charles soon learns that his rhythm is crazy. His ass is burning despite preparation and the rapid slaps of wet skin on skin, his raspy pants and the knight’s growling merge together.

“Stop,” Emma materializes in front of Charles and puts a hand over his hammering heart.

“You look beautiful together, but our sweetheart here would rather have you on top. Right, darling?”

Charles nods gratefully and she bends to kiss him and swipe wet hair from his hot face.

“Don’t spill inside him, though,” she warns the knight. “He is my guest. Be polite.”

The knight dutifully follows her instruction and lays Charles on the edge of the bed, hoists his legs up and apart and enters him again. Charles comes when he grabs him under his buttocks to lift him up some more and the cock presses just where he needs it.

Charles feels overcome by the energy consumed from the man’s release and kisses him one last time when the knight falls to bed on his back.

“You know how to ride down a man of his stamina,” laughs Emma, offering him his clothes. “Thank you for joining us today.”

Charles dreams very good dreams that night.

 

 

 

 


	21. Chapter 21

 

 

 

 

Charles sighs and stretches on his side, savoring the fulfilling soreness and stretch. He pulls up bedsheets to his chest because he worked up quite a sweat and an open window lets in a draught.

He wishes Emma would return faster.

“Do your parents know where you are?” asks him the knight, peering into his eyes as though trying to glimpse a clue there.

By the way, how old does he think Charles is. When the knight isn’t frowning, he doesn’t look like he has more than five-six years on Charles.

“If you don’t want to talk to me, maybe —“

“I’m fine. Really alright,” Charles looks up at the frowning man with a smile. “If you want to know, I have no parents. Not that I know of. I spent most of my childhood in the orphanage.”

“Then, who is taking care of you now?”

Again. The man really doesn’t know how to give up.

Charles wants to say that he is on his own, but it’s not exactly true. He thinks of Erik, who still didn’t come back and thinks about the knight Emma Frost doesn’t call by his name. Just Summers at times.

It strikes Charles how different this Summers knight and White Witch are, yet how well they understand each other. He learns that he can sense a connection between them, almost as if they are being tied together. Not by ancient spellwork like he and Erik, but by something else.

“You have such a good heart,” says Charles, sitting up and wincing slightly. “Thank you for your concern. Also, you’re fantastic in bed.”

He beams, but to his surprise knight’s cheekbones turn slightly pink. Now he looks younger, indeed. Even that black eye-patch can’t throw a shade on the freshness of his complexion.

And he looks to the side.

“After the campaign in the East, after my injury… I sometimes lose it when emotions overcome me. I get terrible urges. I act as though I am a different person,” he rubs the back of his neck. “Emma is able to keep me subdued. She is helping me to recuperate.”

This tender way he’s talking about her when she’s away is very significant.

Charles pushes the covers to the side and swings his feet down, sitting on the edge of the bed by the knight’s side.

He takes the knight’s hand in his and squeezes, offering comfort.

“You’ve been doing great,” he says and lets go before it becomes too personal.

Though, how more personal it can get when exactly ten minutes ago the knight had fucked him so hard, that Charles was afraid his certain regions would be rubbed raw. Not to mention that Emma was teasing his cock while the knight was taking him from behind. He was afraid he would lose rein on his magic because of such vigorous double stimulation.

“What might be taking her so long?” wonders Charles as he is coming up to the window.

From here, he can detect voices carried in through the open window by the breeze, so he grabs a window frame and takes a peek outside.

The burly, massive bulk of the man in a decorated coat forces his heart to miss a beat, but when the man turns to say something to silent Emma and Charles sees his profile, the floor literally dissolves beneath his feet.

Kurt is here. Kurt is talking to her.

Charles is thrown back to the dark room, where he’s kneeling on the floor, hugging his bruised stomach protectively and feeling blood seeping from the gash on his temple. It’s difficult to breathe, because his nose is puffy and clogged from all his pathetic crying. But he is afraid that if he inhales too loudly or makes any noise, which can interrupt an angry tirade, it might be considered disrespectful and there will be consequences.

There are always consequences.

He simultaneously feels a heavy hand on his shoulder and a voice in his ear telling him that he should have never presumed Academy is for the likes of him, when his place is with the rascals. Charles felt he had nothing to lose then, so he talked back.

There were consequences.

His mind unhelpfully conjures up a mosaic of hurt and fragments of helplessness, which render him unseeing and numb.

“Hey, lad. What’s wrong?” the knight’s voice is coming as though from the distance.

It echoes in Charles’s head like a stone thrown in a dark well, but it also helps him to ground his mind enough to starts pulling at the magic lines.

He turns to Emma’s wary lover, already clasping the lines in his fist. Electricity is prickling all over his bare skin, but Charles is unable to balance out the runes in his state.

Raw power will do. Since training under Erik and surviving the Tower he discovered he has quite a lot.

He raises a hand up to stop the wide-eyed knight, who is trying to yell something and pours his fear and his despair into the spell, praying for it to work.

The Ground Hall materializes in front of his eyes, and as it does, a shock strikes through his right arm and Charles yelps and goes down on his knees. His arm twitches and burns and tears well up in his eyes. He can’t move it at all. It’s just a useless, painful weigh by his side. Oh, heavens, let it not be permanent. He’s read enough about the dangers of imbalanced seals to picture possible consequences.

Cradling his useless arm, he slowly crawls up the stairs to his room.

The Tower seems unbearably cold. Or is it because he fled naked? Oh, he did.

When Charles finally reaches his chamber, he goes straight for his bed.

After he spends more than strictly necessary lying under the covers, he discovers that his shaking won’t subside. The cold is not to blame, not really.

 

***

 

 

Two days go by, yet his arm is still out of commission. The bright side is — the pain is bearable. It doesn’t hurt like his entire arm is burning. Rather, it feels as though it’s smoldering.

Having no choice, Charles uses his scarf as a sling, fixes his arm in it, puts on a cloak and cautiously teleports to the small town he passed on his way to the Tower.

He sees a black-haired man on the street who smiles at him and just approaches him without any preamble. The curse does its job and Charles leaves an exhausted, blacked-out stranger half an hour later.

Ten days fly by like that. Male and female faces are a blur. He honestly wouldn’t be able to tell them apart if asked.

There was an accident when one man tried strangling him. It seems, he preferred his lovers struggling for the last breath of air. Charles hit him with a shock bolt and stopped restraining demon in retaliation. He fed well that day. Only, the numbness inside him only continued to grow. Each night, he soaks in his bath tub until his skin gets wrinkled and he becomes tired of maintaining the proper temperature with magic.

After a week, his injured arm develops a twitch. This is something, thinks Charles, dutifully scribing down notes on his experience. His work in the Library and learning loads of magic theory is what is keeping him sane.

He also tasks himself with finding out more about the Necromancer. Every day he visits another village or town and listens to people talking. He is discreet this time and he avoids any sight of guards like plague.

Most of the tales about the Necromancer are exaggerations. A pestilence starts in the fishermen’s artel in the south, dangerously close to the capital. Mages take care of it. But it wasn’t the Necromancer striking down with malice. The pestilence was brought to the continent by rogue foreign ships. An entire farmer’s family is found in their field. Mangled horribly. But those were feral werewolves. And mages took care of that too.

But, the attack on the caravan — that was the Necromancer. The windmills by the Tower — that was the Necromancer. And the commotion on the Duke Essex’s graveyard had the Necromancer’s traces all over it.

His investigation brings him to a garrison by the Druid Woods one day. It’s here when he notices that the spring has come. He is standing on the edge of the fortification wall, marveling at yellow blossom covering the fields below, when he hears a warning cry.

“Do you hear me? Get down from the edge, fool!”  

Charles glances back at the stout, stubbled man in leather armor, who clenches his hand in a fist. His eyes are dark and feral. When Charles lets his aura come into view, he sees lots of deep, vivid red, but he doesn’t believe that the man is particularly dangerous.

“Go drown yourself in a ditch for all I care. Just don’t you dare jumping from my garrison wall,” he growls.

Charles chuckles darkly.

“I could probably step down and walk away without breaking a sweat,” he says slowly, looking below.

The walls are tall, but not taller than the Tower.

“Then, what are you doing here, mage?” spits the man and instead of irritated he sounds outright hostile. Though, he doesn’t back down.

“Are you a local captain?” asks Charles.

“Well, aren’t you smart?”

“I think I am, actually,” Charles jumps from the melon on the wall walk, so that he and the man are standing feet apart.

Charles’s shoulders sag suddenly and he mumbles an apology.

“Sorry, sir. I shouldn’t be here, I know. I was just looking for something,” he shrugs with one shoulder and offers the man an apologetic bow.

As he is turning to leave like most civilians do, through the gates, the captain clears his throat.

“Hold on, kid. Are you alright?”

“No, far from alright,” speaks Charles frankly and startles when he feels a strong grip on his elbow.

“Stay, then,” the man lifts up a hip flask, which makes a characteristic sloshing sound. “I was going to take a break up here. You seem like you need it too.”

Charles looks into his dark, shrewd eyes and stays. And even gulps down poison from the flask, which twists his stomach in knots and then magically makes him warm and loose. The captain’s name is Logan. After a few minutes of almost silent flask exchanges Charles realizes what is irking him. Being literally dragged to hell and back, he’s sure that what he is sensing is a half-demon. Can Logan feel him too?

Charles glances at him sideways, noting that the captain is built like a beast. His hair is greying on the temples. His face is weathered and his stubble is trimmed in a brusque manner that suggests it was done with a dagger. Which might be not far from truth. He sighs, thinking back to Erik, and takes the offered flask again.

“May I ask you something?”

Logan grunts in reply.

“I’m warning you. It’s a very unusual thing to ask.”

Logan gives him a dirty look.

“Alright,” Charles worries his bottom lip with his teeth, feeling that his time is almost up.

The sun has almost rolled down from the sky.

“Would you like to bed me?” he turns to Logan to judge the reaction.

Logan chuckles and takes another swig.

“You got me,” he smirks, “I never saw that coming from a pale, thin kid, who looks like he is in deep shit.”

“I’m serious,” Charles looks at him imploringly. “This is a matter of life and death for me.”

“You’re not joking,” realizes Logan.

“You won’t regret it,” adds Charles quickly, nervously stumbling around words. “I can make it worth your while. I’m rather versatile, you see.”

He wants to go on, scrambling for arguments, but Logan stops him by putting a hand on his shoulder.

 

 

 

 

 


	22. Chapter 22

  
  
  
  
  
  
“Ouch,” Charles winces when Logan pushes his back to the door and jolts his hurt arm when it gets in the way.

“The fuck, kid,” Logan immediately pushes away from him, searching for his eyes. “You’re injured. I want to say that what you are offering looks more promising by the minute, but are you sure you’re up to it in your state?”

“It hurts now,” mumbles Charles with relief, hugging his sling to his chest. “Oh, thank heavens, it hurts normally again.”

“You lost me there,” Logan grumbles. “I’m no healer, but I’ve seen plenty of wounds in my life. May I?”

Charles nods. His lips are tingling from the kiss and he finds that he’s really hoping for the continuation, but he trusts this man. He doesn’t know why.

He looks around captain’s humble quarters with simply-cut wooden furniture and a linen table cloth being a single fine spot of entire space. He chooses to perch on a chair. He discreetly glances at the narrow bed by the window, lamenting its modest size.

Logan lights more candles and puts them on the table. They protest at first, puffing a thin, black trail of smoke, but then the flame levels out.

“I don’t have much time left,” he says as Logan carefully extracts his arm from the sling.

“Then, you can come back tomorrow morning. Unless you need it that bad. Fuck, was it magic?”

He is holding Charles’s right elbow and through the gap in his sleeve the skin looks purple. It’s a gruesome sight, Charles agrees. He tells Logan the short version of what transpired.

“The muscles aren’t regenerating properly,” warns him Logan, flexing his wrist and then fingers.

Charles inhales harshly, excited. He can feel the motion and it elates him. Vague, yet it is there, present.

“My advice to you: see a healer. We have one in garrison. But you have to catch him sober first thing in the morning.”

Overwhelmed, Charles looks up at the man and his lower lip begins to tremble a little. He tells himself to hold it in. He can’t embarrass himself further.

“Thank you.”

“You’ll thank me later,” Logan is standing up, but Charles tugs his sleeve down.

“I need you now,” he says firmly and adds, softer, “please.”

Logan watches his pleading expression with an unreadable, still face.

“I’ll come in the morning, I promise. Before coming, I’ll prepare myself for you. I’ll stretch myself just for you, so that you can just slip in me without extra preparation,” Charles’s voice drops as he plays on the pull between them and it intensifies, he can feel it. “Or, better yet, I can ride your cock. You can stay in bed and let me take care of everything myself. I shall work hard to earn my fill.”

He feels primal lust steaming in Logan’s veins, below his steady composure, and Charles boldly dives in. He sees himself through Logan’s eyes — are his lips really that red? His eyes seem unnaturally blue, as though magic essence itself is burning within their depths.

Logan is picturing tearing down his clothes and pushing him face down on the bed. He imagines restraining Charles’s arms and legs and mounting him ruthlessly. Charles glimpses himself on his knees, hands stretched between his spread legs and tied to his ankles, his ass in the air, red from thorough spanking, his wet, spasming hole begging to be taken. He sees himself helplessly choking on a huge prick gagging his mouth. Now Charles knows that sometimes these images mean something and sometimes they don’t. Often people never ever want these illicit inventions of their inner selves to come true. Though, it must be told that he likes what he sees.

“Do you know how it will feel tomorrow morning?” Charles continues, sliding his left hand up the inside of Logan’s powerful thigh to his groin. “I’m tight and soft, and also very hot inside. I’m going to be slick for you. But no amount of preparation can be enough for a shaft like yours.”

A bulging manhood is prominent through the fabric of his rough breeches, so Charles covers it with his palm, pressing it down and massaging gently. Even separated by the layers, he can sense the building heat.

Finally, Logan gives in and hunches forward with a deep groan, placing his hand on the table with a dull thud.   

“You have got a big cock, which means I’m in luck,” Charles whispers, slowly stoops closer and rubs his face along the hardness in a _very right_ way.

Logan punches the table and his free hand presses Charles’s face to his groin in the imitation of fucking and he comes with a harsh grunt.

Tonight, Charles returns sated. He also feels lighter a bit.

His evening, once in a while, stays undimmed with miserable musings.  
  
  
  
  
***  
  
  
  
  
Logan, in his untamed nakedness, does look like a beast. His arms and legs are thick like logs and tight with rolls of intimidating muscle, his chest is wide, his body is covered with abundant curling hair. His member, which Charles didn’t have a chance to meet properly yesterday, looks daunting in the best way: thick almost like Charles’s wrist, red and already rising mightily amongst dark curls.

While lying in bed with his arms folded behind his head, Logan has his dark eyes only on him.

He watches Charles getting undressed with naked want. Appreciative and proud of such attention, Charles takes his time unlacing his shirt. Then, he simply lets it fall on the wooden floor, lit with bright morning sun. He has to readjust his arm in the sling, and while he is doing it, his chest and the skin of his back get covered with goosebumps, his nipples harden under ravenous attention and a slow swirl of arousal twists in his bowels. Charles smiles and runs his palm over his chest, stroking his tight nipples, flickering tiny, rosy buds with his thumb. He doesn’t restrain a gentle moan rising up his throat.

“Get over here right now,” grunts Logan, spreading his legs and taking hold of his erection.

He starts pumping it slowly and Charles observes, mesmerized, as his prick fills up even more.

Ignoring Logan’s order, because anticipation is as important as an act itself, Charles slowly tugs off his boots and then begins unbuttoning his breeches. He chose them specifically for occasion. No only they hug his legs and buttocks in a complementing way, but they are also good for giving a show like the one he’s giving today.

He slowly tugs the breeches down from his hipbones and lower until his cock springs free. Then, he only has to roll his hips and the breeches just crumple down his knees to his feet. Charles carefully extracts himself from them and looks up when he hears a dirty curse.

“Like promised, captain,” he bows a little, faking nonchalance. “I prepared myself in advance. Here, let me show you.”

Charles takes one step closer to the chair standing between the bed and the window and turns around.

He steps his feet apart and bends slightly. He also grabs hold of his butt cheek with his left hand and pries the flesh to the side.

The creaking of bed means Logan is sitting up, done with Charles’s disobedience and Charles’s breath hitches as he clenches around the butt plug, buried in his hole. The black tip of device should be visible to Logan.

Floor squeaks under the captain’s weight and in a beat there are strong hands on his ass, parting his buttocks impatiently, pressing bruises into his tender, sensitive skin there.

“What is it?” Logan’s voice is suddenly raw and scratchy, as though he hasn’t talked in ages.

“A butt plug,” says Charles, moaning when Logan tweaks the protruding tip. “I use it to stretch myself when occasion requires. Especially, when I am about to accommodate someone as big as you.”

“Fuck,” Logan twist the plug again and pulls at it, so Charles feels his anus unfurling and feels the wider part of the device coming through the rim.

He groans from pleasure, from feeling hands on him and from an intense swirl of energy Logan is sharing with him without even realizing it.

The plug comes out with a wet pop and Charles exhales. Too soon. The tip is pressing into his tightening hole again, filling him with familiar weight and granting his spot sweet, nice pressure.

His heart picks up a rhythm and when Logan does that again he thinks he’s ready to start begging.

“Are you a courtesan, kid? You know and use such things at your age,” Logan’s hand slides lower and he grabs hold of his tightening balls. “Dirty things. You are beyond shame. How many cocks have you had up your ass already?”

“This month? Quite a few,” pants Charles, shriveling.

“You will let me in because you like them big, don’t you?”

“Yes,” Charles hisses as Logan strokes the sensitive skin of his perineum and then the tip of the plug with rough fingers. “I was dreaming of you all night. I want you to come in me, in my ass. You can plug your seed inside, knowing I’ll be keeping it in all day long. Or, you may make me expel your white cream, see how it dribbles out… Oh, heavens, do that again.”

Logan chuckles and slaps his balls. Charles jolts and cries out. He didn’t expect that.

“I’ll flood you, kid,” promises him Logan, forcefully turning him around and leading him to bed by the grip on the back of Charles’s neck. “Down you go.”

He bends Charles over his bed and Charles only has the presence of mind to shift his weight to one elbow. His carefully tied ponytail gets loose and slaps the side of his neck. The plug is yanked out of his ass and two, then three fingers plug him instead roughly. When Logan tugs them free, Charles cries out again.

He grinds his teeth when a big cockhead bears upon his rapidly closing pucker, piercing inside in a deliciously painful way, working forward through his walls, deep, deeper yet, until the heavy weight of the man’s balls is resting snugly against the skin of his ass.

Logan bends over too, to plant a kiss on his neck, which in a bit turns into a bite. Charles clenches round his erection, a moan is punched out of him and then another one when he feels Logan’s teeth on the strained muscle between his neck and shoulder. Logan licks a stripe from his sweaty nape, along his spine and moves his hips. Charles’s head falls down as he is bearing that huge cock.

After the initial break his thrusts are quick and ruthless, his hand occasionally lands a fiery slap on Charles’s ass. When the release hits him, Logan grabs Charles’s hips and hammers in, as deep as possible, good on his promise to flood Charles with his spunk.

Charles’s head is spinning from the amount of energy he has consumed. He clenches his anal muscles round the deflating prick, trying to milk it for sure.

Logan’s grip on him immediately weakens and its Charles’s turn to turn around and lend him his shoulder for support. The man is so heavy, that Charles is glad to push him down on the bed.

“You kept your promise,” Charles says to bleary-eyed Logan when he brushes his wet entrance. “Would you like to have a look at your hard work?”

He smiles a devilish smile and lifts Logan’s unresponsive hand from bed, turning around and guiding it to his leaking hole. Logan’s fingers twitch when they touch the trails of come, flowing down the back of Charles’s thighs. Charles lets go of his hand and he is satisfied when Logan grunts and his fingers slide up through his own mess to probe Charles’s sore pucker.

“I believe, riding is postponed till tomorrow,” Charles slaps away his hand, which is getting insisting, and bends to retrieve a plug.

“I’ll be going,” he says when he ends picking up his clothes. “Thank you, captain. You have been a tremendous help.”

“Wait,” Logan struggles to sit up in his bed and succeeds, which is a wonder, considering how much Charles has taken. “Do you have time?”

“Some,” nods Charles.

“Your hand,” Logan’s eyes are certainly clearing up. “I can take you to our healer if you want.”

I absolutely forgot about it, realizes Charles and meets his eyes with a grateful nod and a smile.  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	23. Chapter 23

 

 

 

 

Healer’s breath smells like a terrible hangover, and therefore is quite eye-watering, so Charles tries to hold in air while the man is humming something and poking at his arm. Charles had to take off his shirt and fresh bites and finger marks stand out like stark proclamations of his recent activities.

Logan is sitting on the chair by the door. Charles noticed that he sagged down with evident relief.

He looks back to the red-headed healer, who is wearing a strange band on his head, and whose eyes are tinted red. Druid roots, perhaps?

It looks like they disturbed him in the middle of something, judging by the hickey below his stubbled jaw and his unlaced shirt.

“You have tried basic healing spells. Not entirely hopeless work, but stupid,” he comments and Charles starts to respond, but when realizes that the man is not listening, if his far-away look is any indication.

He suddenly lays his hand on Charles’s belly button and utters a few words.

The seal is unlike anything Charles has seen. It flashes gold and he is prepared to squirm, but the sensation proves to be pleasant and warm. Until the seal shines green and the spell dissolves, leaving the healer shaking his hand irritably.

“Who put that on you?” he peers into Charles’s eyes questioningly.

He can’t mean his _geis_ , Erik assured him that it would remain unseen even for those with sight.

“Sorry. What exactly?” asks Charles, while thinking quickly what it might be.

“One hell of a protection spell,” answers the man in a dull voice. “Doubt I can overwrite it in hundred years.”

“It interferes with your healing seal, because it deflects alien magic directed at me,” slowly comes to the realization Charles.

“Should weaken, naturally, in a month or so,” the healer claps him on the shoulder. “That’s it. Don’t come again.”

Did Erik do that while he was asleep? Looks like he did, answers his own question Charles, torn between a rush of gratitude and justified indignation.

Logan pointedly clears his throat and the man grumbles something unsavory under his breath.

“Alright, alright. But there’s nothing I can do,” he raises both hands, palms up.

“If I simply wait it out, will it be alright? Will it heal on its own?” asks Charles and earns himself a flat look.

“No,” the man deadpans. “You’re telling me you’ve got some feeling back. That’s as far as it’s going to get. It’s not a physical wound, stupid. Right now, here,” he taps Charles’s right shoulder for emphasis, “your vital energy is blocked, cut off from the rest of your body and the flow within your body is quickly readjusting itself, closing this part off. Very quickly for some reason. Even if you recover more mobility, there’s no way you’re ever channeling magic with a hand like that. Consider it physically present, but amputated in the spiritual sense. Are you following me?”

Charles’s heart squeezes in his chest. Is this the price he has to pay for letting fear override his mind?

An idea arrives all of the sudden and he straightens up.

“Would you… Could you teach me your craft, please? I can still use a seal on myself, right?”

“No,” huffs the man and then he and Logan exchange a few angry words in a language Charles can’t comprehend.

“He will,” promises him Logan after the healer storms out.

 

  
  
***

 

 

  
  
“How did it go?” immediately asks Logan when he opens his door.

“I did it,” beams Charles, excited, and lifts up his right hand to demonstrate. “It’s shaky and it can’t stop prickling, but I can do this. Look!”

He calls upon air sprites and a white seal reveals a sphere of condensed wind, which appears above his trembling, outstretched palm.

Logan rolls his eyes and tells him to come inside.

“I think your friend was angry, actually,” hums Charles contemplatively. “I mean why could you be angry when you show something and a person understands everything from the very beginning? Shouldn’t you feel happy and accomplished? As a teacher?”

Logan eyes him strangely.

“Do you understand how these strange beings called people work, kid?” he asks Charles mockingly and when Charles adopts a frown, he shrugs. “Forget it. Lose your pants and come here.”

He pulls off his shirt on the way to bed and Charles quickly follows, undressing simultaneously.  


 

 

***  
  


 

“Breathe,” tells him Logan, whose big hands are circling Charles’s waist as he’s sinking down Logan’s cock.

Charles utters a breathless laugh and squeezes his eyes shut again, focusing on taking that length, straining to skewer his ass upon that massive cock. He finally releases his breath when he sits on top of Logan’s thighs and leans forward a little, folding his legs and putting his hands on Logan’s chest for balance.

“It’s a big challenge,” he is panting through inevitable pain of stretch and initial discomfort. “I mean, it is not getting easier: your cock is huge.”

“Stop whining. You can take it just fine,” Logan urges him by slapping his ass. “No slaking, kid.”

Logan then rubs his hands up and down his sides, up his heaving chest, casually rubbing nipples with a hint of a nail. As he does it, Charles groans and it reverberates everywhere, urging his pulsing walls to relax and then tighten up again. His nipples have become very sensitive lately and Logan uses it to his advantage.

“Move, kid,” Logan grinds out through his teeth, digging his fingers into Charles’s hips. “Fuck yourself on my cock. Come on, you lazy brat.”

Charles smirks and does, rising up on his knees a little and then sinking in. He picks up a rhythm soon, moaning nonstop, while pain in his channel and around his anus translates into sharp pleasure. Logan’s hands migrated to his buttocks, squeezing the hell out of his ass, spreading his flesh impossibly wide. When Logan starts meeting his thrusts halfway, Charles nearly falls all the way forward. He continues holding himself up with his shaking arms, while sweat is dripping into his eyes and his rectum is about to get primed. He takes Logan’s load with a surprised gasp.

Logan lets him fall on his chest. His shrinking cock slips out wetly and Charles instinctively clenches up, holding escaping seed in. He stopped draining Logan too much after their second time. The man has so much life force, that it’s ridiculous to imagine, and, also, Charles started feeling guilty after leaving him in a state of anergy. He can take just what he needs and come back for more later, he decided.

“Hey, kid. You didn’t,” Logan nudges Charles’s hips to the side. “You didn’t come.”

Charles, with certain amount of bewilderment, finds out that he is still hard, his cock is trapped between his and Logan’s body. He is so used to riding on the pleasure of the others, that he didn’t even notice.

“It’s not about me,” he mutters, rolling on his side, but Logan grabs his forearms and sits up.

“I will decide who it is about now,” Logan pushes him face down on bed. “On your knees.”

When Charles does as he is told, his knees are roughly pushed apart and the soreness in and round his asshole flares up. He whines a little and his inflamed hole gapes open just a bit, letting out a squirt of seed.

Then, he feels something hot and wet closing around his anus, rough stubble scratches his ass cheeks and then Logan sucks. He is sucking his come out of Charles’s rectum, panics Charles a little, clenching helplessly and sensing Logan flattening his tongue and leaking his sore entrance. He sucks at the rim again, and Charles, biting his lips and whimpering, feels that his anus relaxes again, he feels the tip of Logan’s tongue in his hole, as calloused fingers are spreading his thighs impossibly wide, until he begins clenching and unclenching very fast, dribbling sperm in Logan’s persistent mouth.  

He comes just from that: from having the other man lapping at his leaking ass, tasting his own come.

When he recovers a little, breathing heavily into bedcovers, he flips on his back and reaches for Logan, smashing their mouths in a messy kiss. It tastes weird, but the implications, the fact that he has his tongue in the mouth that has just been servicing his well-fucked ass so nicely, makes his cock twitch again.

 

 

 

 


	24. Chapter 24

 

 

 

 

Every morning, before sunrise, Charles climbs up to the top of the Tower for meditation. Not only the swirl of energy is particularly powerful here, but also, every time when he sits on his folded cloak in the center and lets the colourful magic lines shine bright in his eyes, he attempts the impossible: he wants to bend the energy to his will without a rune or a seal mediator.

There are a few rare moments when he almost succeeds, or so he thinks. He almost, almost feels the lines leaning towards him. But every time when he believes he’s close, magic pulses strongly and continues to flow like it always does, oblivious to human effort.

That’s why seals are so important. They are pieces of code, which help those with a gift to manipulate energy. Each seal has a potential to be filled with as much force as a mage can muster. Ultimate seals taught by the Ancients, like a teleportation seal, require a great deal of magical energy, and a great deal of precision, which Charles failed so spectacularly not so long ago.

Charles inhales and exhales calmly, listening to the songs and voices of the retreating night. Though the Tower itself is isolated and the garden around it is oddly silent, if he focuses, he can still hear animals roaming the fields and nearby woods.

He keeps his palms pressed together for better concentration, as he centers his attention on his very core. He senses power all around him, washing over him and he coaxes some closer, until warmth pulses in his chest and feeling of freshness slides over his skin and then, when he is sure it’s working, sharp burning pain slices through his insides. It forces him on his hands and knees, coughing violently and gasping for air. When he brings the hand to his mouth in attempt to stifle the cough, he is almost expecting it to come back red.

This sudden flare of pain is fading fast, leaving him shaking and thinking _Erik_. Something must have happened to Erik.

The notion of something happening to Erik seems ridiculous, for his Master has become a constant in his mind. He is a constant in this realm, indeed.

But, Charles shouldn’t forget that Erik, also, can be hurt.

The Guarding is very powerful. Almost invincible.

Yet, he is not immortal.

As Charles takes the stairs down, slowly putting one foot in front of the other, because his shock is too recent, he realizes that Erik must have felt the echo of his hurt too.

Charles’s tremendous fatigue after his departure. His hand.

Did he force it on Erik as well?  


 

***

 

 

  
  
He is tapping at Logan’s door, when he hears captain’s voice behind his back.

“You said I shouldn’t expect you today.”

Charles turns around, agitated.

Logan is probably fresh from the morning training, since he standing there shirtless and sweaty. His strong body is simply radiating heat and might.

“Oh,” Charles understands that he’s overstepped a line. “I apologize for intrusion.”

Logan is fucking him, that’s alright and the gain is mostly mutual. But it’s not entirely fair of Charles to demand it of the man when the urge strikes him. Especially, after they have developed a sort of a schedule.

“What happened?” asks Logan, holding the door open. “Come inside.”

“I doubt I can ever tell you what happened, unfortunately,” sighs Charles, offering Logan a small, apologetic smile. “I’m sorry. It’s not entirely my secret.”

“Mages,” growls Logan, though with little malice.

When inside, Logan looks him up and down, as though measuring him up. Charles’s face becomes hot under his blatant stare and suddenly he recalls that he didn’t prepare himself in advance.

“If you’re already here, you can get to work,” Logan sits on a chair, spreading his legs and opening up his pants.

Charles wordlessly kneels between his legs and takes hold of his freed cock. It twitches in his hand, so Charles smiles and presses an open-mouthed kiss to the cockhead. He laps at the slit, sliding his hand up and down the rising shaft, working Logan to steel hardness.

“You’re boring me today,” says Logan and grabs his head without a warning, forcefully pushing Charles’s jaw wide and shoving his prick inside. “You should be sucking cock with all your heart. This is pathetic.”

Charles can’t breathe, he can’t relax his throat around the intrusion, and his lips are stretched painfully round the shaft. His eyes fill with tears. When he tugs at the pull of energy which is Logan, he feels that the other man is focused, that he is cataloguing each and every Charles’s reaction, so Charles takes a breath through his nose and lets his throat relax.

“That’s better,” Logan pats his head patronizingly. “Good kid.”

He is craving for more control today, it seems.

Right when Logan’s cock pushes deeper, while he’s tugging at Charles’s hair stronger than before, there’s a knock on the door.

“Come in,” groans Logan, pressing Charles’s face into his groin, as his lust skyrockets, pulling Charles along, making Charles’s bowels heat up from within, making his cock fill in anticipation at the lewd image he is presenting: on his knees on the floor, face buried between the captain’s splayed legs, open mouth full of cock.

Charles hears a spluttered, embarrassed apology behind his back.

A man’s voice, he thinks, when an idea strikes him. Maybe, this is what he needs, what he came for. For more. For something intense to help him stop worrying.

He clasps Logan’s hand and Logan immediately understands, pulling out of his mouth with an obscene, wet slurp.

Charles, still on his knees, looks back at the young man, awkwardly frozen in the doorway.

“Come here, don’t be shy,” he says.

His lowered voice is harsh, but it’s not what forces the man to obey, not entirely. Charles’s curse, his _geis_ does. When the demon inside him sniffs the man, has its eyes on him, he has no chance left.

“Are you into recruits now?” Logan puts a hand on his shoulder, obviously having some worries on his own.

“Please, relax, captain,” Charles stands up. “Unlike you, he won’t remember a thing. Do you have anything we can use to slick me up? Because I’d like one of you to fuck me from behind. Fetch it, please, be so kind.”

It pleases Charles that Logan listens to him. Youth’s hands undressing him and worshipping every inch of his skin is also very, very pleasant. Charles kisses him in reward and takes him by hand to bed. As he lies down, the man follows, ravishing his neck and chest with attention. He closes his eager mouth over Charles’s nipple, sucking at it, needy, like a baby sucking a feeding breast. Charles sighs, moaning gently. This one is an opposite to Logan. He’s got the mild-tempered and lenient fellow this once.

When Logan returns, he tosses the young man back, roughly turning Charles’s head to the side and planting his cock back in his mouth.

He has to claim back control. Charles can understand that, so he just goes pliant, allowing both man to manhandle him.

Logan is feeling the shape of his cock by rubbing the outline it makes in Charles’s mouth through Charles’s strained cheek. Charles opens his eyes just a fraction and he tries to move his head into a more comfortable position. Logan doesn’t let him. He puts pressure on his neck and grabs a handful of his hair and Charles stills, breathing in the other man’s musk, sweat and heat. He relaxes his muscles, his throat, because chances are Logan will enjoy stuffing his face with his entire length again.

“He is pink like a flower down here,” he hears, then feels an unmistakable glide of a slick finger in between his open legs and a whisper follows, “Gods, it’s tight, so tight and hot.”

Logan chooses that moment to start moving, rocking in his mouth just a little. He also lets go of his neck and grabs Charles under his knee to maneuver it up, stretching the back of his thigh, opening him up for more fingers.

Charles never had his mouth fucked when he was just pressed into bed on his back, unable to move. He can only flatten his tongue and time his swallows and also concentrate on breathing through his nose. He _knows_ that these two don’t want his participation. They want him to be docile and to provide two warm orifices to fuck into. He wants their energy to survive. Plain and simple.

While his mouth is otherwise occupied, his slicked up ass welcomes cock too and he hears a satisfied groan of the nameless fellow, who sinks into his willing body. His cock is thinner than his Master’s or Logan’s, but the prick is long and hard. Not among the biggest he had the pleasure of accommodating, yet Charles judges it should be enough to feel pleasantly filled where it counts.

Charles knows how to clench his ass when the nameless man is pulling out, he knows how to squeeze the prick just right. He also knows how to relax his throat and when to utter a strangled moan, so the two of them come at the same time. Logan manages to spill his load on his mouth and chin. When the flassid cock slips from his anus and the intensity of their release overpowers both men, Charles pushes Logan’s bulky self to the side.

He then gingerly sits on the edge of bed and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand, observing the two with a critical eye.

The itch under his skin is gone, his mind is quiet again, but he will need his refill soon, so he taps Logan’s arm, accompanying his touch with a spark of magic.

“Thank you. I feel much better now. Meet me here the day after tomorrow at noon. Bring me someone else, if you don’t mind company,” Charles throws a look at another prone body in bed. “This recruit of yours is a bit on the frail side.”

Logan, his mind befuddled with lust and recently depleted of life force, tries to slur something. He clutches Charles’s wrist, which is a great feat in his state.

Charles shakes his head and smiles sadly. He is becoming rather fond of the captain.

Besides, he thinks, as he bends to press a good-bye kiss to his cheek — Logan is being good for him.   
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



	25. Chapter 25

 

 

 

 

All Charles’s senses are buzzing, and a ringing is filling his head. Then, there comes a pull. _The pull_ , to be precise.  
  
The Tower, even hundred miles away, is calling him home.

Charles springs up, throwing on clothes in haste, cursing his poor luck. It could have happened any other time. It might have happened while he was studying in the library. But, of course, it had to happen like this. If he’s right, and it means Erik is back, he can at least fake a decent look.

He spares a brief look at two men, he’s spent the most thrilling hour with. Both are fast asleep, because he was particularly famished. Even Logan, helpful and kind Logan, is out of it.

“It’s a goodbye, captain,” says Charles under his breath and activates a seal.

Magic energy twists the space, tearing his presence out from the fabric of the realm, and flashing him forward to the Ground Hall, where Erik is already standing, leaning on a black staff, his cloak stained and torn in places.

“Erik,” Charles exclaims and rushes to him, catching his Master in a hug, pressing them face to chest.

Erik lays his free hand on the spot between his shoulder blades, and, while Charles rejoices, leans into embrace.

“I have been so worried,” mutters Charles, breathing in the mix of smoke and something else, something sharper. It envelopes Erik whole: this menacing fragrance of dissolution and misery.

“You didn’t change much,” Erik draws back, leaving his hand resting on Charles’s shoulder, taking him in. “I see you have fed well.”

Something in that sentence, an implication Charles can’t forget about, throws a shade at his joy of seeing Erik again.

“I wager that was some kind of lesson,” says Charles slowly, letting go of Erik and taking a few steps back. “You, not telling me what I can do to people.”

“I knew you wouldn’t like it.”

“Wouldn’t like it? A way to smoothen it, certainly,” repeats Charles. “Erik, I could have killed someone.”

“I don’t understand. What are you complaining about?” asks Erik, watching him with narrowed eyes.

Charles takes in a shaky breath: he doesn’t want to say it, not when Erik is standing within touching distance, so dear and so close. The one who has firmly occupied his heart. But these words are vile. They are tearing him from within. And Charles decides, selfishly so, that he’s been keeping it in long enough.

“You have been draining me. You have,” Charles shakes his head when he realizes that words are falling flat.

“What is your argument? Didn’t I save your life? And, tell me, how altruistic do you think I can be?”

His world, his everything is tumbling down as he hears such callous words.

Charles discovers that he has nothing to counter that. All his carefully constructed opinions pale in comparison, so he just spills it as it is.

“I thought we have something,” he says harshly, using his honesty as his final weapon he spills it as it is. “I thought I am in love with you. I respect you and I can’t help noticing that you’re very attractive, you’ve been good to me in your own way…”

When he understands where he’s going, he stops again.

“I see, I must have led myself here. Into thinking that you can ever love me back.”

The friction in the air between them becomes palpable, as though space itself contracts and captures them in a stifling sphere.

“Do you think I would let just anyone stay here?” questions him Erik, coming closer.

Charles is feeling a strong need to take one more step back.

“Let’s put it straight: I was taking precautions, indeed. I couldn’t allow this demonic influence wear me down. As for you, you’ve been stuck on the verge of two worlds too long. You have changed. And I was able to contain this urge of yours, but I chained myself to you to do it.”

“You have been draining my strength,” repeats Charles, willing his expression into a mask of determination.

“If that is how you see it. And if I say that I was keeping you from draining me, reversing the flow? Unlike you, I have responsibilities. And also, unlike you, I can’t afford to succumb to the whims of demons, for I’m the Guardian, in case you forgot.”

Now it is Charles’s turn to turn defensive, but Erik won’t let him say a word.

“You are acting annoying right now. Stop it. Are you still that entitled, self-indulgent child with who has arrived to die on my doorstep? Or are you saner and wiser? Yes, I’ve been using you. I wouldn’t pass up a chance to feed a little, to indulge myself in the goods willingly offered,” Erik leers darkly and his thick aura nearly chokes Charles.“You are, after all, delicious. Your body, your soul… But I didn’t lie when I said that our lives are now intertwined, our souls are tied. I need you, Charles. Just like you do, because this is how things turned out. Yet, you tend to make the simplest the most difficult. Why?”

Erik is so close now that Charles feels his body heat and senses all things that are so Erik: his scent, the strong line of his jaw, his light, penetrating eyes, the subtle tan of his skin. He thinks of his hands with rough palms and long fingers. These hands can make him lose his head from pure bliss. The desire he has been keeping at bay hits him brutal and hard.

“Undress for me, Charles,” Erik leans to whisper in his ear. “We both know you want it more than anything. You should know I want you. Always. I didn’t go to all those lengths to have you turn away from me, because your delicate sensibilities tell you to.”

And because Erik makes him lose his mind, makes him weak and pliant like no one else ever did, Charles only mutters a pathetic “let’s go upstairs.”

“No,” insists Erik, tipping up his chin and regarding Charles with eyes that are simply ravenous. “Did you forget? I have been waiting for too long. I want you here and now.”

Charles unbuttons his jacket as though he’s dreaming. It’s a little wonder it goes smoothly and only when he finally shreds all clothing, standing bare in front of Erik, he realizes that Erik can see the marks. Because Charles can still feel them. He’s barely rolled out of Logan’s bed when the pull from the Tower alerted him.

He can acutely feel fresh bite marks on his neck and on the flesh of his buttocks. Phantom hands left bruises on his hips. Heat rises inside, adding to his arousal, when he wonders whether Erik can sense the others’ energy on him. He must definitely smell their scent on his skin.

Erik’s look pins him in place, forces him to remain steady while Erik traces the marks with his coarse hands.

“Two men?”

“Yes,” breathes out Charles. “I didn’t have time to take a bath. I can —“

“No,” denies him Erik again. “Turn around. Hands on the wall.”

Charles gulps down the conflicting mix of feelings when arousal colors his world in red.

“Feet apart,” urges him Erik and Charles feels his hands carefully prying his ass crack open, revealing his freshly fucked puffy hole, extremely sensitive to any notion of touch right now.

His entrance feels wet inside. It also feels like the rim is already covered in drying semen crust. Also, Charles is afraid that he might be still leaking leftover seed. Both men pumped him full, coming inside in turns. He enjoyed it, no doubt. But there is something in the way Erik reacts that speaks danger.

Erik stuffs his thumb in his ass and Charles whimpers from such treatment. When Erik tugs it free, some seed does escape. Charles barely keeps in a high-pitched noise of complaint.

“Still wet,” says Erik unnecessarily. 

He shudders, suddenly apprehensive of Erik’s steel grip on him.

“Are you scared of me?”

The question forces Charles’s squeezed eyes open.

“I’m not,” Charles gets out without thinking much, because the truth is burning him on the inside. “Heaven knows I should be, but I am not.”

Erik slowly runs his hands up his back, where the ticklish sensation wakes up his nerves and awareness of his submissive posture grows. Charles’s skin is tingling, as though he can suddenly perceive everything with every inch of skin, everywhere.

His heart is pumping in his ears when he hears the rustle of clothing, followed by a demanding press of a large erect cock against his sore asshole. No amount of arousal could smoothen an instant his tender anus gives in, spreading for Erik, letting him rip Charles’s ass apart.Erik is penetrating him slowly, whether out of concern or cruelty. Charles can’t tell the two apart, because the drag burns like mad. There’s some fraction of piercing pleasure woven into pain. His eyes fill with tears as Erik slowly pulls out, torturing his tender walls and then as slowly he pushes in. After Erik reaches around to caress his chest and pinch his stiffened nipples, sore too, Charles begins crying for real from an insane combination. And he can’t stop. Not even when Erik starts stroking his cock and rubbing at the tip, which never fails to throw Charles into shameless begging for more. He is crying and his anus is clamping round the thrusting erection, so he stops caring.

Erik; his clumsy confession, which sounded like an accusation; his heart torn with conflicting emotions. Everything pervading his body and mind is too big to take.

After Erik’s seed bursts inside his channel, hot and welcome, his Master stays pressed to his back, holding shaking Charles in his arms. His softening cock also stays inside for now. Without Erik’s support, Charles would just crumble, as his legs are not obeying him anymore.

He is feeling it now: energy is leaving him, seeping through cracks left by the explosive release. This is exactly how all those people felt, he thinks.

“I have never known what lack of you is, how unbearable it feels. Until I had to leave,” says Erik harshly, his breath warms Charles’s neck. Goosebumps follow.

“I’ve missed you greatly too,” Charles whispers quietly, slowly relaxing and blinking back tears.

“I know,” states Erik and, though on the surface he seems barely stirred, as usual, his words and touches are honey to Charles’s starved heart.

 

 

***

 

 

Charles takes his time teasing Erik, as he’s slowly licking the stripe up the shaft of his cock, inhaling the scent and enjoying the feel of that tense and rock-hard member in his hand. His wet hair is falling into his eyes, obscuring his view, so he raises his head a little to watch Erik. His hand never stops stroking his Master’s cock.

As much as Charles was overwhelmed by their reunion in the Hall, he is delighted that they are finally in bed. Erik thoroughly cleaned Charles and himself in the adjoining bath. While Charles was relaxing in healing water, Erik took his time fingering him and thus cleaning him up from the inside, making sure there was no trace of another man’s scent on him.

Now Erik is comfortably sitting by the headboard, back to the mountain of pillows and Charles is rather enjoying lying on his front and gently bringing Erik’s cock up to the very moment he can taste that long-awaited bitterness in his mouth.

“You’ve learned a new technique?” asks him Erik.

He sounds particularly strained when Charles tries a wicked twist, sucking in the head and flattening his lips.

Charles looks up and, holding his gaze, swallows again, taking more of Erik’s length inside.

This is true. He has been practicing. He is glad that he can show Erik what he can do, that he discovered new ways to please his Master. Seed floods his mouth rather suddenly and Charles jerks back a little, coughing up at the unexpected reward. It’s fine, he thinks then. Sperm is now staining his mouth and his chin. When Erik tugs at his hair, he lifts up his head, deciding against wiping his mouth. He learned this well too. To play at the strings of seductive delights, to provide a perfect picture of pleasure and debauchery.

“Come up here,” says Erik, so Charles leaks his lips and grins, pleased.

He is happy to oblige, snuggling up and resting his head on Erik’s shoulder.

He is holding on to Erik, not afraid of showing his needy side anymore.

“Did they treat you well?”

Charles understands the question: he is recalling Logan and his wild lieutenant, who, nevertheless, was quite able in bed. Emma. He is also thinking of the others, those whose names he can’t even recall, because he never asked in the first place.

“They just wanted me to fulfill their fantasies,” Charles presses a kiss to Erik’s shoulder, lightly running his fingers down Erik’s flat abdomen, mapping the prominent muscles there.

“Who is fulfilling yours, though?”

Charles smiles. He is feeling sleepy, but he is always up to teasing.

“You know this man.”

Erik catches his hand before Charles dares sneak it lower.

“He is a legend. He is beautiful in person and his teachings are rough and demanding,” Charles looks up at Erik from under his eyelashes.

Erik sighs, as he grabs his wandering hand and presses it on the pillow above Charles’s head, moving to lean over him.

“Say it,” he huffs, undoubtedly reading Charles’s mind.

“I liked being fucked by two cocks at once,” Charles worries his bottom lip, reminiscing, “I wish I could be with you and your phantom just like that. Seems like a challenge.”

“I feel like you should earn it,” Erik doesn’t pass a chance to tap his forehead, a gesture both innocent and strangely intimate. “I must be going now, my insatiable apprentice.”

“One more,” begs Charles and a hint of a smirk makes Erik look contemplative.

“I created a monster,” he says finally and rolls over, pulling Charles on top.

 

 

 

 


	26. Chapter 26

 

 

 

 

A week or so passes by in a bliss, too languid and filled of pleasures for another important conversation. Therefore, this talk takes place when they are taking a customary walk outside, early in the morning. Erik is checking the wards and Charles is following in his steps, chatting about nothing in particular.

Erik stops by an arch and turns to face him.

“Why don’t you tell me why I couldn’t feel my hand for a while, Charles?”

“Oh, that,” Charles nervously licks his lips, “I miscalculated with a teleportation seal. It wasn’t stable, so, as you noticed… I’m truly sorry. This is my fault. I dare hope it didn’t hurt much.”

“You’re not the one to miscalculate on that scale,” Erik says. “Omission is a form of lying, apprentice. I believe I have been too lenient with you from the beginning. You obviously need to be punished. Don’t you think?”

“Yes, agreed,” Charles throat is dry and he swallows a lump, reading a sinful promise in his Master’s words.

“I’m still waiting for a clear account,” reminds him Erik sternly.

“I have met some people, who I’ve been spending time with. In bed, mostly,” Charles mutters. “Then, one day my… my foster father arrived. He is also the one who insisted I were banished, which, as you know, led me here. When I saw him,” Charles briefly closes his eyes and then meets Erik’s steady gaze, “I overreacted.”

“Fear is a fine instrument for improvement, if you use it wisely,” says Erik, his expression only slightly tight. “Personally, I see no reason why you should flee if you see him or any of the Academics, which have no influence on or pose no threat to me, and, therefore to you.”

He is right, but wrong at the same time, thinks Charles with newfound clarity. Because he knows what people with modestly sized virtue can do, and Erik, cloaked in his magical prowess and isolation, tends to ignore it.

“It reminds me… You put a protection on me?”

“Of course,” says Erik as though it should go without saying.

“When? I don’t remember anything.”

“You might have been napping.”

Charles expected this, but it didn’t mean he was pleased.

“Though I understand why you thought it necessary, I’d rather be warned,” he says and explains the situation with the healer.

Erik stops, his pale blue eyes scrutinize Charles until he smiles and nods.

“I was worried about you, indeed. But you are essentially right. There will be a parade today in the afternoon. I want you to join me. It’s high time I introduce you to the Kind and high lords as my apprentice.”

Ground must be shaking. Or is it just Charles, shocked and breathless, his eyes wide with complex emotion.

“Your eyes are coloured like spring sky,” says Erik suddenly, drawing him closer by a grip on his jacket. “Let me taste your enjoyment on those delightful lips.”

Charles enjoys their lazy, long kiss, warmed by waking sun and Erik’s touch. He circles his hands round Erik’s neck and tilts his neck to the side, while Erik’s hot tongue maps a tickling trail from below his jaw to his ear. Erik unfastens his breeches, sliding his hand inside, touching, teasing and stroking Charles’s cock until Charles becomes a sweaty, hot mess, desperately bucking his hips into Erik’s fist. But Erik is firm, yet gentle, coaxing a lovely orgasm of Charles, who comes spilling into his Master’s hand, without even taking his breeches off.

As Erik is refastening his pants, Charles is hanging on to him for dear life, breathing heavily.

Unlike their usual exploits, this is a quiet moment, which, despite lack of intensity, tints Charles’s cheekbones bright red. He feels shy and conscious of it. There is a new level of intimacy between him and his Master, nameless for now.

 

 

***

 

 

  
The parade, as Charles learns, is held in the capital due to the established and long-hoped-for victory in the East. The war, Erik tells him, has come to an end. The forces of demon-worshippers are subdued, their leaders dead or captured and the giant portals letting in demons in the realm are closed. Destroyed by the joined forces of the Guardian and her Highness, a Warrior Princess, who have led a dangerous, secret mission in the midst of the enemy land and prevailed.

Charles recalls Eastern wastelands with a shudder. Erik took him there once, so he glimpsed the reds skies and the ashes falling from the bloodied dome like snow. The severed heads. Charles believed it to be the land of endless misery and suffering. The land where magic flow itself got twisted, producing quaint, ghastly life forms no one could ever imagine. Yet, the current Guardian has ended it.

Elation, tasting like the best of wines, fills him when he is perched on the chair in Erik’s study while Erik is donning an imposing red cape, which comes with decorated brassards. Erik puts on rings, with enchanted stones. They shine alluring to Charles eyes, no doubt harboring centuries old magic captured within.

“You are happy,” looks up Erik, as though Charles’s state of mind and heart is uncalled for.

“How can I not be happy?” retorts Charles, mentally cataloguing all details that make his Master unfairly attractive.

“Think, Charles. Think about our world and listen to your heart,” slowly says Erik levelling him with a look. “This is the major breakthrough in centuries. Demons are driven away, pushed back, the Princess is returning with glorious victory. The Guarding is patching up the breaches in time. Everything is beautifully arranged. But, tell me, my bright apprentice, what is missing?”

“The bloodshed?” Charles replies and as a thought strikes him, his joy deflates. “The balance?”

“So you can see it: the scales aren’t evenly weighted now,” Erik comes to him to put a hand on his shoulder.

“They will strike back,” says Charles with dried lips, meeting Erik’s eyes.

“To balance it out, a few storms must be weathered. Be prepared.”

Erik squeezes his shoulder in accent.

Charles draws on his calm from Erik’s steady, strong aura and his darkness, which, to him, looks almost warm.

“Maybe, the parade is not such a good idea,” mutters Charles, thinking back to the clatter and clamor of the capital.

“I am not enjoying it either, but it’s time for politics. Time to reestablish my presence in courtroom. Besides, I want to secure your position sooner rather than later.”

When Charles is standing inside one of the many bell towers, scattered around the city, he is watching the procession below and thinking about Erik’s words, mulling over the consequences. He was among the demons, after all. And he knows that they won’t be giving up on this world. There are others. Other worlds to devour, more different souls to enslave, but they hadn’t said their final word here.

He and Erik agreed that his Master should go first. Charles can come later, when the slow procession will be reaching an inner city ring protecting the palace.

Observing from top has its advantages: he still hears music and the high priest’s magically enhanced voice announcing victory, talking of glory and might of warriors.

The knight leading them all is actually a lady he has met before. Moira. She said her name was. She is riding a gloriously white stallion. Her billowing cape is royal blue and she is wearing a sparkly something on her head. Charles can’t see what exactly this is, but he suspects a heavily enchanted gemstone.

Erik is riding a few feet behind her, his cape in deep contrast with deep brown of his horse. Knowing him, Charles can guess what expression he’s wearing even without seeing it up close.

He smiles as the Princess and the Guardian pass the arch, leading to the palace, flower petals being thrown over them, while the crows erupted in cheers after something the high priest has said.

When he’s almost prepared to go, his eyes fall on the anomaly in the sky. The magic lines are brimming there vividly, as if strained under pressure. Charles has an outworldly, sick sensation which he had before: he really can’t mistake it for anything else.

This, he realizes, will be one hell of the breach.

It happens faster than he predicts, and while he’s weaving a teleportation seal to get closer to Erik, the skies split open and the horde bursts out. Serpents, winged demons are screeching, diving down to claw and tear unsuspected humans. Charles hears ringing in his ears when he activates the seal and appears right next to Erik and the Princess, who discarded their horses.

Erik has his hands outstretched, a seal he’s forming is massive, it is bending space itself and Charles, in an instant, catches the Princess by the hand and throws a shield over them. Just as a blast of energy from his Master’s spell pierces the skies, obliterating demons in its way.

Soft ashes are falling down, ringing in his ears doesn’t stop and Charles has to clutch his head in his hands.

“Can you stand?” he knows that voice.

The Princess is shaking him.

Charles tries and inhales acid air. When he opens his eyes, at first he thinks that he’s dreaming. Because it’s dark. The skies are black, and only a large blue moon is hanging above the city, a giant eye in the sky, right there the breach used to be. Not all demons were taken down. Some are still flying in the sky, chased by magical attacks and arrows.

In this light, the Princess looks grim and angry: her lips are pressed thin and her sword is drawn, glinting with silver, reflecting ominous moonlight.

“I need to go, your Highness,” Erik helps him up, because the noise in his head doesn’t let Charles move, making his nauseous. “This is not a singular breach. Can you handle it here?”

“Sure,” she says and salutes him with a sword.

Her slim figure disappears in a swirl of blue and Charles finds himself back in the Ground Hall, where the Tower itself seems to be shriveling, walls appear to be contracting and the grand seal carved into stone is shining.

Erik curses, furiously, and grabs Charles by his shoulders. Charles can’t focus on his face as though it’s being distorted.

“I hope you can forgive me, Charles,” he doesn’t understand what Erik is talking about. “I must do this.”

And Erik touches his forehead, and Charles’s head splits open with raw pain and… he is lying on the ground, heaving, rough stone under his cheek, his body hurting all over as if all his insides have been crushed.

He doesn’t know how much time has passed, but the seal is still emitting faint light, so he raises his head, blinking with wet eyelashes. His barely open eyes are drawn to the dark figure in the center. He feels he has unwittingly attracted its attention by moving. It steps closer and an instinct within Charles is screaming at him to get up and run.

Through grey cloud inside his head, he realizes that he has started crawling away, scratching his hands on the rough edges of the seal as fear is telling him to move.

When the boot stomps on his hand and presses it to hard stone, he barely registers pain. He is already swimming in it, all hurt inflicted by Erik’s last spell is too much.

“We finally met again, young mage,” says the demon in Erik’s voice. “Since you haven’t been visiting I personally brought Hell to you.”

 

 

 

 

 


	27. Chapter 27

 

 

 

The phallus trying to push inside him is unyielding. Sweat breaks out above his upper lip and down his spine when a demon tugs him on his cock, and a rounded tip penetrates his ring of muscle slightly. Charles is grabbing his shackles for any leverage, though his wrists are already wet with blood. Torn skin scraped by metal hurts. His stretched rim hurts. Charles’s stomach muscles are taut, his insides are clenched tight, as though on guard, not letting the intrusion slip in.

“Next time, I will chain you up to the ceiling, so that you can’t crawl away,” says the demon, serene.

Charles doesn’t utter a word. This is the only bit of choice he has left and he chooses to remain silent as inevitable happens and the High Demon in Erik’s skin penetrates him from behind, yanking Charles closer with great force.

Motion scrubs Charles’s knees raw on stone tiles, but he only bites through his lip, panting, listening to wet sounds of fucking as though it is not happening to him, but to someone else.

When it finishes inside him, coating his walls with sperm, Charles feels the draining effect of their connection taking over as he is slipping into yet another delirium.

When he blinks his eyes open, he is still lying on bare floor, in the basement. Shackles restraining his hands are molded into the thick ring in the center of the chamber. Their reach isn’t long enough to let him stand up, so all he can do is lie there, praying for another delirium to come.

Unlike the upper levels of the Tower, in here, everything is very warm. The stone floor feels like it has been heated by generous sunlight. Red glow is shimmering quietly from the uneven cracks in the walls. At least, he won’t be dying of exposure to cold, he thinks with detachment.

His head now hurts with absolutely no surcease. The effects of whatever spell Erik put on him come with a price. Deep inside, Charles knows the truth, knows why the demon is keeping him alive and relatively unharmed, why it is regularly coming down to feed on him. He doesn’t let himself consider this truth, but he can’t prevent it from filling him with previously unperceived feeling of malevolence towards demon and rage towards Erik using him as a conduit, as a means to keep his precious Tower safe.

He swings in and out of consciousness, and next time he opens his eyes the demon is here, turning him on his back.

Again?

He is not sure he can stay completely silent this time, so Charles shuts his eyes and spreads his legs in a show of submission. Nausea is back, that’s why he’s coaxing his body to relax in order to bring the pain to the minimum.

“You are missing prick that much,” huffs the demon with disdain and leans over him.

Charles holds in his breath when he does, but the demon just does something to his shackles so that they come loose and grabs his raw wrists.

Charles doesn’t expect that kind of pain, so he yelps as demon hoists him up to his feet with no effort.

“Rejoice, I am moving you upstairs,” it says.

Along the way Charles blacks out from fatigue when it forces him to crawl up the winding stairs.

 

 

***

 

It is watching him eat with strange fascination on Erik’s usually stern face.

Charles feels how with every other bite his belly starts to hurt, devoid of food for a while. He realizes that the bowl with water is too heavy. He won’t be lifting anything now. Not with such strong tremor in his limbs.

“Can I have a cup, please?” he mutters, watching the demon from under his lowered eyelashes.

“Do I look like your valet, mage? If you need it, go fetch it.”

Now, it seems bothered by something, decides Charles, as he’s using the demon’s permission to stand up and roam around in the cupboard.

He is thankful that in Erik’s study there is plenty of furniture he can use to support himself with. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be standing at all.

Out of the corner of his eye, Charles glances at the window. It’s dark outside. But whether it is still demonic night with a blue moon or an ordinary one he can’t tell. There are loads of scrolls on Erik’s desk too, mounting like a pile. Someone has been trying to find a way out, he muses darkly. He didn’t take the demon for a researcher, but the fact that Erik drove him to these human means, must be a sign of its anxiety.

Charles comes back to the table with a silver goblet, the only substitute for a cup he could locate. He sits back gingerly, anticipating the flare of hurt in his nether regions, but the renewed pain is stronger than he imagined. He doesn’t have words for this hurt. He tastes blood from his bitten lip, breathing like he has just been exercising for hours instead of fetching silverware.   

Say what you might, but food grants him energy and with it, fractured hope comes back. Think, tells himself Charles, staring at the tablecloth. Why it needs to feed on Charles and why it hasn’t killed him… yet… is more or less certain. Erik’s body is a container for the beast, and Charles being hurt will hurt it, or vice a versa. Somehow, the demon didn’t manifest in its true form.

Pondering over it, Charles gulps down water, but his throat remains dry. Demons in their true form are massive, the manifestation of High Demon… Charles can’t even imagine how devastating it could be.

Charles missed that instant when the creature broke through, because he was hit with a spell, but, maybe, he is thinking, maybe Erik let the beast possess him on purpose. Charles wanted to believe that the Guardian did what he could to contain the breach. Perhaps, it was the only way to prevent the titan from emerging.

“You have plenty thoughts in your head,” demon’s hand is suddenly there, caressing his cheek and Charles splutters.

The goblet clatters down to the ground.

He did not even notice when it moved to stand behind him.

“You learned to shield your mind, young mage,” states the demon, grabbing his chin. “But it matters not. When I’m done with your flesh I will enter your mind too.”

Charles lowers his eyes down: eye contact won’t do him any good under the circumstances.

It is trying to find a way to leave the Tower. Right, he thinks. The Tower must be the key. The final barrier keeping it from walking out in the world and wreaking havoc. Bringing chaos and destruction in Great Warlock’s skin would be easy. Having Erik’s prowess at his command and demonic powers combined would be enough to raise an army of followers. To turn this land into a new East.

Did Erik anticipate it?

Did he really turn Charles into his final safety piece?

Charles is afraid that he did. His head hurts, always, as though a lot of things are trying to cram in, to fit inside his skull. One of them is becoming more and more distinct. It’s the realization that he, Charles, is now the one with the Tower and the Tower is the one with him.

 

 

***

 

 

It should have felt the echo of Charles’s pain, that’s why it fucks his mouth this time. Charles’s jaw hurts, muscle stretched uncomfortably, while the demon is rocking into the ring made by his wide-open lips, cockhead sliding easily down his fluttering throat.

Charles is breathing harshly, when he feels that his own cock begins responding, filling up. Why? Why now, when the demon is forcing him to service his member… A hint of tears starts prickling his eyes. Tears of humiliation.

Thankfully, it pulls out soon, discharging seed on Charles’s face and pushing him to the side.

Thank heavens, thinks Charles, curling on the floor by the demon’s chair. Depowered, he can only welcome fainting and hope that he won’t be dreaming.

But he does dream and it feels so real.

Charles is standing in the Ground Hall, in the center of the seal, facing the open doors. Through them he sees a green field: long grass is bending in beautiful waves under the wind. The sun is shining brightly. He strides outside, a bit wary in the doorway, but it’s fine. Nothing prevents him from stepping outside, into the sun, where warm wind is caressing his skin, playing with his hair, throwing thick smell of wild flowers in his face.

There is no hedge outside, no old garden, no arch to determine the edge of the wards.

Only wide summer fields and woods in the distance.

Charles turns around to look at the Tower: it is majestic as ever, but it doesn’t look ancient. The stone is white, polished and vivid against the scenery, and moss hasn’t touched the foundation, not yet.

He hears laughter and turns around to the woman with long red hair, who is smiling and walking up to the Tower with a bunch of kids.

When the kids see the open doors they run past Charles shouting, competing who is going to be the first to the seal.

They are passing through Charles, as if he is not here.

“Are you lost?” he hears.

Charles dubiously turns around and meets her kind smile. Her eyes are pools of black, aura thick with darkness.

“I think I am from the future,” says Charles slowly, suddenly apprehensive of the way she sees him.

To his relief, his face is clean and he is dressed in his favorite laced shirt and pants. He looks at his wrists, which should be covered in caked blood, but they are fine, unmarred.

“Welcome to the Tower, future Guardian,” she says, bowing a little. “I am very glad I was granted a chance to see you.”

“No, I am not,” Charles wants to say, but she is looking at him with such calm understanding, that if he were not a phantom he would crumble to the ground.

“It was a pleasure, but your presence is disrupting this plane. You need to get away before it senses you,” she frowns. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

What he was looking for? What? His head begins to hurt, as though all pain from real world is leaking straight into his dream.

“I need help,” gets out Charles. “I need to bait it somehow. I need it to —“

“It feeds on pain and suffering.”

“I know,” Charles mutters harshly. “Trust me, I do.”

“I see it now. You must stop resisting,” she says mildly. “That knowledge is already within you.”

She suddenly gives him a push and Charles falls into blackness.

 

 

 

 


	28. Chapter 28

 

 

 

 

When Charles barely opens his eyes he somehow _knows_ that he is alone in the study. Shivering on the floor. With his head killing him again.

What did she mean?

He gasps, pressing his hands over his ears to block out the noise, which seems to be coming from nowhere and everywhere at the same time. What could she mean? Who was she?

_The first Guardian._

Charles’s head is reeling, so he inhales a pained breath and only miraculously manages to take hold of his cracking consciousness. He can’t go on like this.

What if he treats it as another concentration exercise?

He sits up, back to the leg of the chair, ignoring the pulling pain in his lower body. He puts his fingertips together in a triangle, until his fingers start turning white from pressure and strain. Something is off with him: magic lines are everywhere around, but the demon must have done something, so that every seal shatters before he conceives it. Even with his perpetually limited reserves, he has been trying since he found out that he is shut in the Tower.

You are a mage, Charles tells himself. Be rational, be reasonable.

This is another riddle you’ve got to solve, another task to deal with. There are at least two lives at stake, reminds himself Charles. His and Erik’s. And many, many more in case he fails.

And, like a wave, everything accumulating in his head is flooding him, threatening to wipe him out, to obliterate everything, every single moment or feeling making him Charles, it promises to leave nothing but the clean slate behind. To be overwritten.

He concentrates.

So much memory. So much experience. Not his. The Guardians. All of them. It’s difficult work threading through the layers and not losing himself in the mosaic of other Guardians’ lives. The whirlwind that fills him with their knowledge also fills him with their feelings. Love, rage, affection, grief, longing and regret are filling him to overflowing, to the point that he is suffocating.

 _I am who I am_ , insists Charles. This is his mind and his heart, and he is fighting, desperately, to keep it that way.

As his body is lying prone on the floor, and he is being himself again, his exhausted mind is marveling at the final secret.

The Guardian is not a title, it’s a shard of an ancient demiurge passed from generation to generation, too ancient to have a name, more ancient than titans themselves. That red-headed woman, that elven mage from his dream, was the first to ever travel to nether and merge with it. She was the first to establish the line of Guardians, Great Warlocks. Since then, she claimed that the Guardian is the only mage in the realm destined to maintain the balance in the world.

Charles now _knows_ that Erik was aware of the emergence of High Demon from the start. How? Because Charles told him.

He has seen himself through Erik’s eyes in the moment when he came to him, sick and weary, crying and begging to save his life. A foolish child, with dirty, tear-stricken face in ragged, dust-bitten clothes. The child, who suddenly looked at him with fire in his eyes and uttered a prophecy Erik has been waiting for all his life. Charles didn’t remember that, but he does now.

He now _knows_ he had disrupted Erik’s life-long self-imposed mission. Lately, the Tower was becoming volatile, was messing with the Warlock, who has locked himself in for too long. The seal created by the First Guarding was fading, getting thinner. Erik made calculations preparing for the one, final breach. He would either kill or seal the beast forever, sacrificing himself and thus ending the Guardians once and for all.

Why let Charles stay? This was one of the most impulsive, dubious decisions Erik has ever made. He was telling himself he could use an inexperienced, naive mage with such potential, especially the one carrying a seed of chaos and greatly attuned to demons and the Tower itself.

 

 

***

 

 

The demon holds his head under water just because it amuses the creature, but Charles doesn’t fear drowning. As expected, the hand on his neck retreats soon and he breaks the surface, spitting water and gasping for air.

The water in this cryptic basement dent is hot, smells of pine and is unsettlingly dark. Since the demon led him down and ordered him in, Charles can’t but help thinking how many more layers there are underground. His new memories are telling him of deep caverns, which are full of dangerous creatures, who never saw the light of day, forever imprisoned in the dark and guarding the Tower from beneath. And Charles wants to meet one of them very much. Without witnesses, of course.

Even splashing by the edge of the dent, Charles doesn’t really feel any bottom under his feet. At times, something touches his legs or belly, slick and quick, and retreats before Charles reacts.

“Get out,” the demon orders. “At least, you won’t be smelling like an animal.”

“And whose fault is it?” asks Charles rhetorically.

He then almost expects the demon to backhand him.

“Do you think you can bait me like this?” it drags Charles closer by the grip on his hand.

Charles shrugs, smiling crookedly.

“You can,” says the demon then and smacks him across his face, hard.

Charles’s head snaps to the side and he tastes blood in his mouth. The side of his face is numb for an instant until it begins to grow hot with hurt. The smack has busted his lip, indeed.

“Do you realize how easy it is to snap your foolish neck?” wonders the demon. “You are so weak, you won’t even understand what is happening. But I want you to know. When I’m done with this place, you’ll die swallowing your own blood, while I am pulling out your intestines, little by little, while I am sampling your flesh right in front of your eyes. Then, of course, I’ll resuscitate you again.”

“Yes, it will happen exactly like you’re saying,” Charles interrupts, not so politely.

Without a word, the demon yanks him closer and twists his hands behind his back, shackling him again and forcing him on his knees.

“I shall come back to fuck you in the ass with your Master’s staff. How much would you like that? To be torn apart by hard wood from inside. And then I will fuck you myself, slowly and carefully, pulling your ripped anus inside out,” it sneers, losing temper. “When I claim this realm, I will have all the power over its creations. And, you, you will know what despair is.”

Charles feels hands clasping his neck from behind and his breath catches.

“You will be my personal slave, mage, like I promised. You will have to be improved. You are going to need more holes for penetration, because two aren’t near enough. As you remember, my feasts can be quite intense, so I will have to enable you for more vigorous participation.”

Shivering, Charles doesn’t disguise his revulsion, so the demon is satisfied. It leaves him kneeling in almost complete darkness, save for red cracks in the wall glinting like embers. It is feeling confident leaving Charles on the lower levels, notices Charles and, when the echo of footsteps disappears, he turns to dark waters.

“You have been listening, haven’t you? You know that I can’t hurt you right now,” Charles licks his lips, because he is about to gamble, and he also realizes that he is speaking an alien language, which he didn’t know before.

“We don’t have all day. It will come back for me soon,” Charles shuffles closer and looks into the depth.

A slick limb shoots out and pulls him under.

 

 

***

 

  
  
Charles comes to his senses lying on something similar to weed or river moss, because his back is resting on something which is wet and feels like grass. There are big, fat phantoms of dead fireflies flying in circles above him and shedding some light.

He lifts his eyes to take in a curious grey creature perched on the tiny island they are sharing. It is sitting on heap of bones and moss. It looks like a giant toad, except that toads have faces and this one does not. It is blind. And its face is a blank oval egg covered with slick, wrinkled skin.

_You know what I trade for wishes, Guardian._

It sounds like a voice, though Charles knows it doesn’t have one.

“I know that you devour memories in exchange. I have plenty.”

_Don’t be a fool. I want yours. I want Charles’s._

Blank face is suddenly hovering over him, the creature’s body bouncing on wrenched hind legs, while its thin paws are pressing Charles’s chest down.

_I also want you. I want to copulate with you._

“Are you serious?” laughs Charles hysterically and looks at the creature’s amphibian body, swallowing another nervous chuckle. “It is physically impossible, I’m afraid. We don’t have compatible body parts.”

_I saw your memories. Demons were taking turns with you. Am I not worth a try?_

How much worse can this be? Charles laughs again, fearing that he is losing his mind. One more rape it is. But, for a price.

“Fine, then. But, to make it fair, you won’t take all memories. Only half. You understand?”

_Yes. When we are done, you will be able to use your magic again, Guardian._

Charles inhales, anticipating the touch when the scenery shifts abruptly.

 

 

 

 

 


	29. Chapter 29

 

 

 

 

Emma’s bed is amazing. It can probably rival his own bed in the Tower and right now he is splayed on top of it. His body is luxuriating. Charles nuzzles into crispy sheets happily, inhaling a subtle illusive fragrance Emma has probably ordered her laundry to be sprinkled with. Smiling softly, he stretches with a lazy yawn and then something clicks in his mind and he sits up, urged by his instincts.

This is a rather fine illusion. Exemplary, he should say.

“A deal is a dead,” no one but the handsome frowning knight tells him, appearing seated right by his side.

“I know,” Charles nods, notices that he is clenching sheets in his white-knuckled grip and forces himself to flatten his palms.

“You can’t relax. I thought this background and this appearance would help,” observes Faceless. “Your participation in our intercourse is warranted, Guardian. Is this better?”

In an instant, Charles is suddenly in his own bed and Erik is leaning closer.

He is so consumed with alarm that he doesn’t even make a sound. This is how demon mocked him this evening before bringing him down here. It took Charles in his own bed. Fucked him, while telling him how frail and pathetic he was, that he was only good as a clenching sheath for cock, a warm hole to dump come into and his so-called Master knew it and has been using him as such.

He foolishly let the Guardian consciousness sleep in the corner of his mind then, shielding it from the demon. Charles thought he would be fine alone, he wouldn’t let it graze him, but he probably overestimated his waning immunity to violation, especially to obscenities spilling from Erik’s mouth, each stressed with a slap or a purposefully sharp thrust in his abused ass.

“If I may,” Charles utters quickly, strangled, “first décor was better. Well, thank you.”

Scenery shifts back to Emma’s bedroom. The knight takes his hand and brings it to his lips, kissing his knuckles.

“What are you doing?” asks Charles blankly, still reeling from those violent images, fresh before his eyes.

“Foreplay,” answers Faceless before pressing his lips, knight’s mouth, to the inside of Charles’s wrist.

It pulls at an invisible string inside Charles, so that his heart misses a beat. He hurries to fill an awkward pause with another question.

“Whose memories have you consumed last? Was it some fancy courtier?”

“First Guardian’s late companion was a man fond of frolicking,” the knight tugs Charles in between his spread legs and makes him sit face to face with him. He is pulling him closer and splaying his legs too. “I can make you prepared faster.”

“If this is an offer, please do,” whispers Charles hastily, shutting his eyes, as those calloused hands are dancing along his spine, waking up unnecessarily pleasant sensations, as a hot, dry tongue is circling his nipple, teasing that tiny bud into hardness.

In a moment, though, Charles extracts himself from the embrace, as a wave of red-hot shame slams into him.

Despite his best intensions, he whines when a rush of arousal hits him and he hugs himself protectively, pulling his knees up to his chest. The changes in his body are both fearsome and exciting: his cock feels painfully full at once and his hole feels… wet. Faceless is watching him patiently as Charles’s hand slips down his ass cheek to his crack, to probe around his slick rim, already pulsing. He groans, dipping his finger inside and then he cries out — more slick gushes from his needy entrance, soiling the sheets.

The worst is — he can’t help it, can’t help clenching around his finger and then clenching around nothing, leaking copious slick from his ass.

Charles looks up at Faceless, trembling like a leaf and feeling hot, so hot. His bowels are simply wrought with pure, undiluted want. Another wave of heat comes crashing into him, pulling him under, in the depth of unlabeled, nameless pleasure.

“A deal is a deal,” Charles manages, lying back on the bed and pulling the knees to his shoulders with his hands. “Do it.”

A change of position results in a different surge of slickness, which makes him blush even fiercer, when he realizes that he is already perfectly open for the taking down there.

Charles looks away and suppresses a whimper when Faceless mounts him, the glide of its erect member eased by all the slick, yet so good, so hot and hard. The prick is inside now, stretching Charles’s asshole exquisitely and holding two of them together. There is no pain, realizes Charles, biting his lip. Only pleasure, only reveling in the moment.

“You’re less opposed to me copulating with you now,” states Faceless, taking hold of Charles’s cock and pumping it slowly.

Charles would writhe from denial and simultaneous stimulation had his body not appear abruptly tied up.  All at once, his arms are tied behind his back: each wrist to separate elbow. His knees are still drawn to his shoulders, now tied to them. When Charles moans, because he can’t help himself, Faceless begins pulling out and sliding in, gently playing with his plump cock, tugging at it and thumbing the slit. The squelch coming from his entrance hold open by smoothly moving prick is making Charles moan in mortification.

Without a warning everything shifts again.

This time, Charles is seated on top, the knight has his cock firmly lodged where it belongs: namely, in Charles’s ass.

Charles’s head is more than a little clouded by this point, so he goes along when Faceless pulls him down on his chest and only keens, startled, as he feels another cock nudging inside his already occupied entrance, brash and thick.

Is that Logan? Blurrily, Charles senses large hands grabbing his waist and then the second cock forces its way in, stretching him to the limit, forcing more slick, more wetness squish from his dilated hole. A hand, pressing him down by a firm hold on his nape, rough fingers bruising his sides and the flesh of his buttocks. Definitely Logan.

Keen pleasure bolts through his spine and he greets two pricks inside his taut orifice with a happy cry.

He thinks, he is a pendulum. He is swinging back and forth. He is coddling two great cocks inside his hole. Charles can’t believe it. His last coherent thought is about saying goodbye to all of this, to all blissful memories intertwined with pain and loss.

 

 

***  


 

He is hiding under old creaking stairs. Sunrays are cutting through the gaps between wooden, dusty planks, falling on the torn piece of parchment he has picked up on the marketplace.

Charles is sitting cross-legged on the rags he collected through winter, nearly bursting with joy, grinning to himself like a loon. The writing on the right section of the parchment is a beautiful cursive, he is tracing with his finger, mouthing words carefully. The ink is smudged, in the right bottom corner. Not a big deal, he decides. Pride, as he has been told by a visiting priest is a bad feeling, but as he is reading, really reading familiar words, something similar to pride fills him, makes him giddy.

Torn parchment is telling about a trade agreement with a far-away island called Genosha. And a left section… Charles realizes that he is holding his breath. The left section is a translation into Genoshan, by all means. He lets out a breath. This is it. There are about a hundred new words for him to study today. He is ready to push aside a loose plank at the bottom of the staircase and pull out his self-made writing tools and pieces and bits of used parchment he has been collecting, when he hears voices.

“How old is he exactly?” says a rough male voice.

“It is rather difficult to tell. When he was left here, he could walk, but he couldn’t speak yet. Nine or eight, your Excellency. But worry not, he doesn’t exhibit any undisciplinable tendencies as I’ve been told. On the contrary, caretakers told me that he is a very sweet child. He also has taught himself to write and read and,” the warden lowers his voice meaningfully, “he can do things if you know what I mean. Real magic.”

Charles freezes as footsteps thunder down the stairs, trying not to make a single sound, while his heart squeezes in his chest like never before. A foreboding of a disaster, which forces him deeper in his dark corner.

Upon sound of his name being called out, he presses his hands over his ears.

Then, there is nothing…

  
  
  
***  
  
  
  
  


  
There are red cracks up in the ceiling and red cracks in the walls, glinting like embers. Stone under his back feels rough but strangely warm.

He is naked, his wet hair is plastered to his neck and shoulders, droplets of water are gliding down his heated skin: it looks like he has just taken a hot bath. His body has certainly grown, understands Charles in numb shock, as he is looking at his definitely bigger than before hands, trying to piece what is going on together. There are red, inflamed cuts on both wrists, which are throbbing like mad. Many things hurt in his new adult body, he finds out. A lot of questions are popping up in his head while he is looking around a place he is in. A cave? A basement? Inside, he is curious, but shock and pulling emptiness prevail.

A splash sounds behind his back and Charles jumps to his feet, whirling, with seals blooming around his wrists. He stares at grey faceless something peeking from the dark-watered dent in the ground and he stares, wide-eyed, at powerful magic pulsing in his hands. He knows the pattern of these seals. More so, he has the power to activate each of them and so much more. But how? He is… Charles panics. He can’t remember…

_Listen carefully, Guardian._

The voice in his head calls his attention.

_I gave you your magic back and took your memories, so don’t let it go to waste. Kill it before it realizes what happened._

Another splash and the grey thing is gone from sight.

Grief-stricken, Charles nearly goes down from realization. His memories? He is searching frantically, but nothing is there inside his head.

He was hiding in his spot, he found a piece of parchment. After that, nothing.

This emptiness, it feels like agony. It also feels like there is something bigger than him in his head, something screaming for his attention so loudly, that his head begins to hurt.

Charles shoves it away, scared of voices, as he starts limping around the circular chamber, looking for an exit. He finds winding stairs and he staggers up the stairs, as though led by a thin intangible thread. Voices are frightening him, getting so loud that he has to stop and clutch his pounding head in his hands.

The expanse of the hall he steps into is outstandingly beautiful. Striking bas-reliefs are adorning the walls and a massive seal is carved in the stone floor. Charles leans on the wall to catch his breath. It hurts so much to keep these voices at bay, that he feels tears collecting in the corners of his eyes. Why does it hurt so much?

Suddenly, there is rumbling in the hall and a figure materializes in the opposite corner. Charles breaks into a cold sweat, as a tall man is emerging from the clinging shadows. His every step towards Charles raises a wave of panic inside him and he reacts without a conscious thought, throwing a spell, which rebounds from the man’s shield with a strong booming sound.

His body seems to be acting on its own as he rolls to the side when the attack comes, scraping everything which hasn’t hurt before. His hands are acting weird too, grabbing something he can’t see and tugging at something, at magic lines, he realizes, when a fire breaks out in the hall, roaring on the spot where the tall man was standing an instant ago.

The fire doesn’t burn Charles, it stills upon the panicked wave of his hand and at that moment he feels it. A sudden, hot sensation spreading through his chest. Charles puts his hand there and senses something sticky and wet. His knees fold and he hits the floor, while the pain is spreading fast.

He can’t breathe.

A sneering face appears right above him. It belongs to the man from before.

“I decided that I don’t need you that much after all, young mage. I can wait out until this Tower crumbles on its own. Don’t know what kind of stupid plan was that, but I will not let you drag me in this body with you. Therefore, _I abolish our pact_.”

At his words, something comes loose inside of Charles, like there was a coiled wire in his belly all this time. Now he is free. It is not there. At the same time, his eyes are closing, he tastes something salty in his mouth and his free hand is desperately scratching the floor. He is gasping for breath which he can’t take.

“Enjoy your dying, unfortunately brief,” he hears from above.

 

 

 

 

 

 


	30. Chapter 30

 

 

 

 

Charles is dying.

He knows this because his attempts to keep strange voices out fail and suddenly they seize everything under control. Charles is firmly pushed back as other people, those from his head, take charge, directing his hands and even his thoughts. That’s why the hand he is pressing to his bleeding chest shines with a golden seal, while the free one shoots up, throwing a quick bolt at the demon to buy time for closing his wound.

He has to watch in fear as his body is upright again, his hands raised for the attack, exchanging blow upon blow so fast that he can’t even hope to count the flashes that follow.

In the clashing he tears down the bas-reliefs and shakes the foundation of the Tower, his every step is guided, his every seal is selected with a collective effort.

“ _Those who would stand against us_ ,” he is saying, deflecting a dark beam flung at him by the demon, “ _Thou who art darkness shall perish in nothingness_.”

The demon lets out a terrifying screech when his shell is smashed against the far wall.

Charles feels that the voices of people helping him are wavering. As they stand by the crumpled form of the demon twitching under the crashing seal, Charles feels that all power begins seeping through multiplying cracks.

He falls on one knee, which brings him dangerously close to the seething creature, whose human face is distorted in rage, features swimming in front of his eyes.

Every nerve in Charles’s body is screaming at him. The fading voices are screaming at him to finish the demon, for the seal is already powering up, winding around his forearm.

Charles lifts his hand and… stops.

“I can’t do this,” he whispers, his heart full of incomprehensible pain and pulsing anguish.

His vision is dimming.

He pulls all magic lines he can reach together and plants his fist on demon’s chest.

“Begone, invader,” Charles barely gets out. “Go back home.”

An entire Hall trembles as space twists, thunder rumbles, and black lightning splits the seal carved into stone in two.

Charles’s body is sagging down, but he manages to hear a shrill indignant cry of the creature forced out from the host.

 

  
  
  
***

 

  
  
  
“I can carry it,” argues Charles, but Erik pulls the basket from his loose grip.

“Save your breath. Literally. Carry yourself downstairs for a start,” he gives Charles an assessing, skeptical look, hesitating. “Or better wait for me here. I’ll come back for you.”

Charles waits until he leaves the chamber and cautiously stands up. One foot in front of the other, he repeats to himself, tentatively moving closer to the exit, using walls and furniture for support.

It is important to do everything slowly, he realized upon waking up. If he ever brakes his tentative pace, ever hurries up, something clenches within his chest and then breathing becomes really painful. When Erik is nearby, and he almost always is, he grimaces like he is angry when it happens, but now Charles knows that this is how this man’s face looks when he is worried.

This Erik is a very strange, rough mage, yet Charles is selfishly glad that he survived and didn’t leave — Charles is afraid of being alone in this odd place. The only place he knows.

Halfway down the stairs, he leans on the cool wall and gingerly sags down on the step. He has dangerously overestimated his strength. His legs are wobbling and while Charles would like to try his luck hopping down, some intangible, _old_ as he is calling it, part of him urges him to take a break. Pondering over that erased part of himself is way more excruciating than struggling for breath. Though he doesn’t know him, he misses that Charles so badly. He wants him back so much.

“Heavens forbid I ever forget how stubborn you can be,” Erik’s voice catches him by surprise.

Apparently, he was lost in his head again.

Erik watches him closely, leaning in.

“What’s wrong?”

Charles looks up at him, blinking, only now realizing that his eyelashes are wet.

“I don’t know,” he says honestly.

Erik’s mouth twists wryly and he wordlessly helps him up, throwing his good hand over Charles’s shoulders.

His blackened hand is still in the sling and each time Charles sees it he feels shame and regret: he did this. Because when he first woke up Erik was adjusting a bandage around his chest, was _touching_ his bared skin and Charles reacted even before he had his eyes fully opened. The fight in the Hall is a blur, though Charles dimly recalls possessing skills and magic, unlike anything he could imagine.

Afterward, Erik assured him that it was fine. More so, he was glad that Charles could protect himself.

This Erik… He is a very strange man, indeed.

Upon seeing a blanket and the basket under an old apple tree, Charles beams happily. His first time outside will be celebrated. So nice.

Erik pours him some wine in a glass, glances up at him, shakes his head and then waters it down.

“Thank you. Smells sour,” Charles accepts the glass, wrinkling his nose slightly at the aroma.

“You will get used to it,” assures him Erik tipping up his glass and simultaneously narrowing his eyes at something behind Charles’s shoulder.

“Stay right here,” he throws, suddenly back on his feet.

Charles hurries to twist his neck so badly, that he earns himself a stab of an ache deep in his ribcage. While he is hunched over, recovering from echoing hurt, he is still trying to crane his neck, to see the person Erik is talking to under an arch. From here, he can only see a bit of a light cape.

A feeling bigger than mere curiosity makes him stand and quietly approach the two, realizing that he can now apparently plant his feet in a soundless way. His body is moving with the coiled grace as though ready to act upon the threat.

“— not obliged to report to you,” Erik is saying. “I think your capital aristocracy can afford to deal with Necromancer on your own.”

“Rubbish,” a woman replies, “you are the Guardian, so act like one, Erik. For heaven’s sake!”

Charles suddenly wants to see this woman, so he takes a step closer and when his eyes fall on her, he gapes in astonishment how beautiful she is.

Her skin is porcelain. Hair is blonde and flowing in a cascade down her back. Her widening eyes meet his and he blushes fiercely, feeling shy and embarrassed because he was evidently caught staring.

“Oh, sweetheart,” she gasps and Erik’s head twists around. “I’ve been so worried you have no idea.”

“I’m sorry, my lady,” Charles mutters, not sure where to put his hands and decides upon straightening his jacket lamely. “I can’t recall you, though —“

“You don’t listen to me on purpose, do you?” speaks Erik, sighing. “This is Emma, Charles. Emma, this is the new Guardian. He is barely holding upright as you see, so I expect you to leave him alone until he recovers completely. Thus, I pronounce this meeting adjourned.”

“No, wait. I’m sure we can spare some food,” Charles swallows and glances at Erik. “The Tower is safe for visitors now. We won’t be hearing from _it_ for a while.”

Erik lets out a resigned sigh again.

After a touch stilted meal, which nevertheless left Charles warming up to Emma’s witty conversation he understands that he has missed other people’s company badly.

“You remember being picked up from the orphanage and that’s all?” inquires Emma casually, wrapping up a blanket, while Erik is helping him to stand up.

“I didn’t remember being picked up per se, but I would like to hear how you learned about it one day,” tells her Charles and she must have read something in his level tone, so she nods and then winks at him.

“You see now? He will be fine, Erik,” she offers them a little sad grin. “But, frankly? I think you should let Charles make his own decisions concerning his duties.”

“He is just a goddamn child,” seethes Erik all of the sudden. “He was too young for this shit from the very beginning. Now it’s even worse.”

“You are the one acting like a child,” Emma jabs back. “You are the same entitled bastard you have always been, believing that you’re responsible for the fate of stupid masses. Responsible for Charles’s destiny?”

“Because I am,” growls Erik, extracting himself from Charles’s grip and taking a step forward.

The very air between them gets thick, electrocuted with their charged emotions until Charles steps between them, raising his hands.

“Enough, both of you,” he feels a cold shot up his spine and he levels Emma and Erik with a flat look.

He is not sure what they see, probably the same thick, intimidating darkness he is feeling deep inside. But they obey and Emma is the first to cut through tense silence.

“Thank you for having me, Charles,” she comes to hug him and he sheepishly wraps his arms around her in response, growing flustered with her proximity.

“Come visit me, sweetie. Don’t be a stranger,” she parts from him, ruffling his hair. “This old grumpy warden of yours can show you where I live.”

He waves her goodbye as she teleports away.

“I wonder how you met her,” Erik scrubs his hand over his eyes.

He appears stiff and exhausted.

Charles swallows, his throat tight. He is feeling weird. As though staying by her side is stirring an interesting warm sensation within him.

Being close to Erik is also weird and sometimes very frustrating because of Charles’s clumsiness. He also can’t always wrestle down apprehension and tension, which almost every Erik’s touch is tagged with, though he is becoming better and better at hiding it.

“Why did you stay here with me?” he asks tentatively, searching for the answer on Erik’s darkened face.

Erik is silent for a long time.

“Maybe, she is right,” he says finally. “I couldn’t leave you because unlike you, Charles, I remember everything that happened while it was controlling me. I remember everything it did and what it planned to do. The least I can do for you is make sure you can piece your new life together somehow.”

He didn’t say anything else.

 

  
  
***

 

  
  
Summer arrives and passes quickly, as Charles rediscovers teleporting and Erik and he travel around the world, not staying in one place longer than a day at most. Charles also rediscovers reading and his amazing ability to understand plenty spoken languages of the world boosts his mood greatly.

Having said late goodbye to Erik, Charles goes up to his bedroom.

He sheds his clothes on his way to a steaming bath, while humming some simple melody he picked up from children after his stroll to the nearest village.

There is something odd about him tonight. Odder than his usual odd.

His body feels… well, different.

He takes his time soaping everything thoroughly, reveling in the pleasant slick glide of soap all over his tingling skin. When he is sliding his hand down from his torso, lower and lower yet, he feels it again. This part of him, which he never paid any special attention to, seems to be alive. Worse, it seems to feel tight and hot.

Feeling his ears burning, Charles washes himself down there quickly. He can’t do it without touching his cock and every time he does, it throbs under his brief touch.

This mysterious frustration is not enough to taint his wonderful mood.

He slides under covers with a content smile, extinguishing candles with a thought, and trying to find the most comfortable position for sleep. Sheets are rubbing his naked skin in a lovely way, but he soon regrets not putting on a nightshirt.

Tossing and turning in bed, he feels how his restlessness is pumping through his very veins, while blood itself is growing incredibly thick. He blushes intensely when he senses it again: this pulling, heavy sensation in his bowels, his groin.  

Charles feels how his blush spreads lower, down his neck and below. He moans, giving in and sliding his hand down, exploring soft skin of his belly, down past rough curls, which he finds so strange and new on his body. He takes his filling shaft in his fist, clasps it firmly. It feels nice. Charles moves his hand a little experimentally. Heavens above. He gasps. This… This is better than nice.

Impatient, he kicks his bedcovers aside and relights the candles, boldly spreading his legs open. He is mortified how indecent he’s behaving and how lewd his plump red cock looks wrapped in his fist.

Charles tips his head back, squeezing his eyes shut. Hiding from embarrassment, which no one can see.

He lightly touches a tip of his stiff rod with fingers of his free hand — his hips buck and his mouth falls open in response. It appears to be wet he realizes with surprise. So sensitive.

He is wary of touching that wetness, so his free hand roams higher, caressing thin skin of his navel just above his hips and higher yet, past his ribs to his chest, brushing his nipples. They prime under his touch and Charles grows daring, pinching one and gasping again as a sensation from his hard nipple seems to bolt to his cock, making it twitch in his grip. Charles splays his fingers over his heart, which is beating faster and faster as he keeps tugging at his throbbing cock. A louder moan escapes him. Then, one more.

What happens next catches him unaware. His bowels suddenly tighten, his back arches up and then his cock bursts.

Wetness lands on his chest and belly. Charles lets go of his suddenly much softer cock, heaving.

He mindlessly drags his hand through the sticky mess on his sweaty skin, as his breathing is slowly getting back to normal.

He can smell himself. A very special, musky smell.

It was good, he decides, yawns and discovers that his eyes are dropping shut.

So he tugs bedcovers over his cooling skin and falls asleep without a care in the world.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 


End file.
